Inside trump’s Lizard Brain

Part II - The Bulwark needs to step up their psych game.

Innocent orange-headed lizard is trump’s better looking, smarter twin.

In Part I of Inside trump’s Lizard Brain, we started exploring how one of conservative media’s most well-established political analysts disappointingly did not share any relevant narcissism psychology in either of his recent Bulwark pieces mislabeled “Reading trump’s Mind” and going “Inside trump’s Lizard Brain.”

While CNI does credit The Bulwark for being one of the few media outfits to delve into narcissist psychology at all, virtually every psychological assertion made in this piece of persuasion is far more about the writer’s mind than trump’s.

In fact, it is almost 100% that this second piece is actually the writer’s own lizard brain fully projecting and transferring his thoughts and fears onto trump, and/or trying to persuade and failing badly from a CNI perspective. i.e. The question left is how much of this article did the author write consciously vs. his actual unconscious projection?

Conscious vs. unconscious

Our next step is exploring the important distinctions between what is true for a malignant narcissist’s conscious mind vs. their unconscious one. As we continue to what is now a CNI autopsy of sorts, we will see what lessons or truths we can find from what has so far been nothing about trump and seemingly everything to do with Bill Kristol’s own projected lizard brain beliefs and fears about Joe Biden, or is he passing them off as trump’s ideas in a weak attempt to persuade?

Consciously, trump both believes he can beat Biden and wants him to stay in the race. As we know from his time in the White House, none of his henchmen (oops I mean aides) give him bad news. No one wants to be the foolish messenger he shoots metaphorically on 5th Ave in a fit of narcissistic rage tweeting on Lies Antisocial.

He also wants the guy who beat him to be forced out, and turn the Dems into chaos. In other words, no matter what happens, in a narcissist’s conscious mind, they are always spinning everything that happens into “winning” and “success” no matter what is going on with them, or in reality.

This should help explain why trump is so delusional when talking about his record. He really does think he did an amazing job and it is that very narcissistic conviction that fools many less aware people into believing him. Apparently humans as a species are not generally wired to think people with complete conviction are telling us “Big Lies.”

Essentially, trump is 100% certain consciously that he can defeat anyone else except maybe Michelle Obama who polls many points ahead of trump. For some reason she scares the you know what out of all these tough, white “alpha males.”

Regardless of what direction things go, trump can’t psychologically handle anything but his winning, which is why like all malignant-type narcissists, the person he lies to the most is himself.

This means anyone claiming to speak for trump’s conscious mind, even the lizard part, and is saying there is anything more than brief moments of conscious insecurity, doesn’t really get the psychology at all.

Jaime Raskin giving Republicans truths they can’t handle.

Side Note: The only “public service” narcissists are ever interested in is in serving themselves to public assets and powers, so civil societies must learn that in the narcissist’s disordered and compulsive selfishness to grab it all, they will never give up any thing or any power, and truly believe they are a god king we would all worship, if we only knew their greatness.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “Nearly every malignant narcissist is used to standing up to compulsive adversities they create for themselves, but they will fail the test of character every time you give them power.”

We don’t need to try this again to know what trump will do. Anything he can get away with, he will do, just like our now fully illegitimate Supreme Court.

It certainly does boggle the mind how every American saw how trump abused his power and knows he will be a vengeful unholy terror against freedom and democracy out to grab everything he can, and yet millions say to themselves, “You know what, we want more of that!”

trump consistently says he wants to be worshiped like his buddies.

What beyond natural or groomed narcissism, brains eaten by right-wing zombie propaganda or a cult-like mind control can cause any rational person or self-aware sentient to think more trump fascist dictatorship could be a good thing?

This is why from a CNI perspective that the primary answers lay in counter-narcissism information like trumpism is Narcissism, counter-propaganda such as the kind put out by Paul Cobaugh, and a nationwide cult-deprogramming like what the “War Department” had to do after WWII to expose and root out nazi-type thinking and propaganda from American civil society.

In “Don’t be a Sucker,” we can see how truly astounding it is how similar the issues and themes being used to divide us today are the same ones racists, fascists, nazis and other types of malignant narcissists used way back then.

Best known as “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” - Lord Acton

It is always about firm barriers

Remember, the only thing that ever gets narcissists to stop bad or horrific behavior, just like small children, are firm barriers. For both children and narcissists, it is their very nature to keep pushing boundaries and it is up to the adults to set firm but fair ones, to teach them right from wrong.

The worm turns on how most children can learn and fit into society’s boundaries, while almost by definition, antisocial clinical-type narcissists never learn and/or cannot accept any societal limits on themselves, ever. This is why they never stop until there are firm barriers they fear, or at least want to avoid, such as prison, public exposure, heavy fines, or their own mortality.

Unconsciously, it is the same but in the negative direction. Here, trump is both afraid he cannot beat Biden so he wants the guy who beat him forced out. Again, his unconscious mind like his conscious one is often most at home in chaos.

Indeed most narcissist’s default even unconsciously is to sow division and cause chaos with shameless backstabbing and toxic whispers, in large part because their subconscious knows they thrive in it, better than most normies, due to most internally being in a chaotic state much of, if not all of their lives. This of course means they sense their home field advantage in dark and chaotic times, hence seem drawn to them and driven to create them, if allowed.

Always remember, regardless of what direction things go, trump can’t psychologically handle anything but him winning consciously or unconsciously, which is why like all malignant-type narcissists, the person they lie to more than anyone is to themselves, and will normally end up in massive narcissistic collapse when it all falls apart.

Again, anyone claiming to speak for trump’s mind, even the unconscious lizard part, and is claiming any form of unconscious security, really doesn’t seem to get the psychology. Yes, many of us see trump’s obvious insecurities but we need to remember he cannot or will not consciously or unconsciously handle any truth about his own personal failings or weaknesses.

These guys are way cooler than trump and may have bigger brains.

Back to Kristol:

“But I don’t think they’re listening to him, and they’re not even listening to the guys who actually won presidential elections like Carville and Axelrod. So please: Keep on ignoring them!”

The above is more of Kristol’s own fairly reasoned lizard brain, and trump probably couldn’t pick Axelrod or Carville out of a line-up. I haven’t heard Carville’s argument but I did read a piece by Axelrod reviewing the Stephanopoulos interview and he called the questioning of Biden “respectful.”

This was shocking to me because despite historically liking Stephanopoulos, I had the irresistible urge to inhabit Biden’s body through the TV, get up, and punch Stephanopoulos in the face. To be clear, I am rarely a person of violence or who punches first, so that should give you an idea of how smarmy and disrespectful some of the questioning of Biden was to my ear.

I don’t know crazy me. I am ok with asking tough questions but elders deserve a little extra consideration and respect. Certainly Biden as a lifelong decent guy, public servant and empathizer and chief has earned some extra consideration and respect at 81-years-old.

Was he perfect, of course not but what I will say is when I looked beyond the elderly body superficial, the Biden I have observed for decades was there and still could remain much calmer under pressure than most humans are ever capable of. He certainly stayed calmer than this one.

“One thing that I have been thinking about, though. I was kind of planning on Burgum as VP. But that name. Doug. Who is excited about a Doug? And maybe with Biden’s age so front and center, I need to get a little of the youth/change thing going with my VP pick.

So I’m thinking Cotton or Vance. And I’m thinking Cotton is safer. The donors think he’s serious, and the establishment types think he’ll talk to them when he’s VP. I’ll obviously ignore him and them—but they can delude themselves if they want.

Willingness to sell one’s soul is a bad sign.

This should say AIPAC, a hard right Israeli lobby, but he’s dark.

But whichever one I take, I’ll have a veteran on the ticket. Like I told John Kelly, it was stupid of those guys to volunteer. But people like that stuff about serving your country. And Biden made a mistake at the debate when he said no service members had died on his watch. We’re going to clobber him on that at the convention next week. Anyway, me having a veteran on my ticket—I think that’s a good look.”

This all definitely seems like Kristol’s brain again because CNI philosophy says the probabilities are trump is thinking almost none of these things beyond fleeting moments. As for the VP, trump wants total loyalty and anyone who will give it to him is probably not worth having. I did recently sense the possibility that he doesn’t like any of his V.P. choices so will choose the person he enjoys humiliating the most. Equally likely is trump is grumbling he has to pick anyone except Ivanka, because they are all horrible people he hates.

I also do not think a narcissist or psychopath veteran groveling for trump and sounding a lot like Mike Flynn or Ron DeSantis will be a good look beyond those who are authoritarian followers, aka the maga gop base. DeSantis definitely proved that darkness without trump’s entertainment value will certainly not appeal to even most Republicans outside of Florida, let alone independents, or the young people they need to trick into becoming their stormtroopers in their not so fantasist anymore, American nazi empire.

“We’re going to win. We’re gonna win very strongly! I think we could have done it on immigration and inflation alone. But to have Joe’s age and his decline front and center—what a gift!

What’s that quote the liberal do-gooders all like? The arc of the universe bends toward justice? Bullshit. The truth is: The arc of the universe bends toward TRUMP.” —William Kristol

While it is true that Biden may have aged in dog years from the stress of the Presidency, most know that is normal for those who take the job seriously instead of golfing at resorts and enriching themselves the whole time. Still, Biden’s visible signs of aging are a political gift to trump because Biden has to remember every fact while trump just makes it up as he goes along.

Biden does the work. trump spent millions golfing.

It is not fair but narcissists convincingly misrepresenting what they did and said compared to others is often how they get away with things. As noted with trump’s “two fireflies in a jar” mental processing, everything that happens helps him (in his mind), or at least he will compulsively lie to himself and others to spin it that way.

Sadly, corporate media keeps proving its complete lack of value by just reporting most of his words without any clarifying comments that reveal to the less-attuned or propagandized public that trump is a pathological liar.

One must have to try very hard not to see a pathological liar.

Conclusions

From the start of his piece, the tone seemed Kristol was virtue signaling he was doing the reader a favor in reading trumps mind for us, when what he was really doing consciously or unconsciously was spinning that honest fiction into promoting his own political beliefs and agenda.

To be clear, whether done consciously or unconsciously, I do not believe that Kristol is being overly dishonest, nefarious or malicious from a political POV. He is just trying to lead people to what he believes, right or wrong, via the literary device of speaking in someone else’s name to argue his point.

Is it a tiny bit deceptive, sure. Does it move the needle, I don’t know. But just as I praised the Never-trumpers for often being the most progressive on the use of narcissist psychology in politics, I must say they seemed among the first, most uniform and most fervent to jump ship and say Biden must go. Again, I don’t think it’s subterfuge, it just sticks out in some telling way from a CNI perspective.

Unfortunately, if Kristol is truly thinking he is reading trump’s lizard brain, his subconscious won that round big time! If he wanted to unconsciously tell us what was on his own lizard brain, he succeeded spectacularly.

In terms of the powerful skills of political persuasion he exhibited in his previous “trump’s mind” piece, this one comes pretty close to failing on all levels, because it not only bypasses trump’s pathological narcissism psychology altogether, it also appears to be a very weak and only marginally honest attempt at persuasion.

It is possible the piece works well on others and I can’t see it because CNI sees right through the projection, but I am dubious. Kristol does not seem anywhere close to trump’s actual lizard brain thinking.

He seems to be literally projecting his own fears, concerns, conventional GOP spin and lizard brain out into the world while pretending to be reading trump’s mind, and I like to think most people would at least sense something is off, and thus would not be persuaded by Kristol’s primal thoughts being written in trump’s style.

In this particular case, his fears are plausible, so I suppose the only remaining question besides who will be proven right or wrong about Biden, is how much of this Kristol is saying consciously vs. the standard human psychological defense mechanisms of unconscious projection and/or transference?

Just remember, while we need all the Never-trumpers we can get on Team Democracy for their inside knowledge and fierce spirit in taking the fight to trump, these are also many of the same people who empowered extremists and then lost their own party to many of the very same narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths that we are trying to fend off today.

That is to say that while we appreciate them as extremely valuable members of the alliance for democratic freedom, they certainly deserve an influential voice, and CNI would happily work with them on background in defeating malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths, they have lost their leadership position until they really prove themselves as winning strategists by helping America beat back the fascists, like they did in 2020.

If they are truly out to redeem themselves and want to take a lead position sooner, they can achieve this by being a tip of a CNI psychological spear, and to stop putting out semi-dishonest persuasion pieces that only serve to confuse the public’s understanding of narcissism, we need they to have, here and now.

Again, since few major media players even dabble in psychology as much as the Bulwark, we will grade this psychological and political failure pretending to be about trump’s lizard brain on a sliding scale. It is an incomplete that needs to be redone soon and must include some informative narcissist psychology.

Unfortunately, the results in November are a binary choice between maintaining progress, stability and some form of global democratic unity, or we slide down trump and the maga Republican’s dark, dystopian rabbit hole of Mein Kampf 2025.

No joke folks!

Bill, I know you don’t want this future either. Happy to talk about how you can use more narcissism spectrum psychology in your writing, and in any subject. Call me, or George Conway. Seriously, you and your readers need it man. Be a mensch! This isn’t close to cutting it when it comes to saving us from the disordered nazi-esque pathologies hunting our freedoms and democracies this November, and into the foreseeable future around the globe.