trumpism is Narcissism

Dr. Bandy X. Lee puts Counter-Narcissism philosophy on the map!

Although published on May 6, 2021, this CNI foundational piece has aged so well not a single word has been changed other than returning the title back to its originally submitted form. Indeed every part still seems 100% on point, prophetic and even more critical in pulling us out of humankind’s current dark path death spiral.

Positively, it was a lifetime thrill and dream come true to have my #1 person on the planet, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, give such an amazing review of my very first article. The public validation of my psychological expertise and vindication of my theories was a long road, but has been a truly humbling and rewarding experience.

In 2022, Presidential Chief of Staff, General John Kelly was quoted as saying he secretly bought Dr. Lee’s ensemble book, The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump, and used it as his as his guide as he “sought help to understand the president’s particular psychoses.” “Kelly told others that the book was a helpful guide to a president he came to consider a pathological liar whose inflated ego was in fact the sign of a deeply insecure person.”

Imagine the joy in finding one of your heroes endorse your work.

trumpism is Narcissism

America is still at a crossroads. While trump’s defeat in 2020 likely saved American democracy, the future is still under grave threat from trumpism and much must be done to save it. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the trumpism threat is that silly little things like facts, logic and reason are no longer effective in helping most Republicans care, understand or believe in obvious truths like the sky is blue, night is dark, or that the name trump isn’t worthy of capitalization, unless we are talking about Mary.

Many of us have watched in disbelief over the years as conservatives went from having sincere and reasonable different points of view, to taking facts out of context, to making up facts to support conclusions, to where we are today with many all-out lying and crying about alternative realities to justify horrific and stupid trumpist words, lies and actions.

What is often asked in pursuit of trying to understand and solve America’s trumpism problem: How did so many get so easily pulled into trump’s cult of personality to the point where they are no longer tethered to reality? What is this psychological hold trump has over most Republicans? How can we deprogram them? Can we deprogram them? These are questions we must answer or trumpism will continue to be an existential threat to “truth, justice, and the American way.”

The Psychology of the Cult of trump

Like at everyone, I initially resisted using “cult” to describe the trump Republicans, but in hindsight, I waited too long, and I definitely underestimated the depth of the cult-like hold trump has had over so many ever since he started running for president in 2015.

Remarkably, even after all the self-dealing, constant lying, and multiple failures to protect the country from Covid, losing in 2020 and then triggering his supporters to invade the capital to overturn our democracy, he still seems to have lost little to none of his normal 80–90% Republican support. If anything, his followers have become increasingly ridiculous, fanatical, detached from reality and authoritarian to the point where their cult leader trump really could “shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose any support.”

This is why it is so important to first understand that trumpism was never really about trump. Republicans have been grooming followers, conservatives, Christians and the ignorant for decades via right-wing politics and media. In addition, many conservative religious authorities have preached that blind faith is holy; then Republicans masterfully conflated religious blind faith with Republican politics, so legions were primed and ready to cult up for a charismatic con man like trump who would tell them everything they were groomed to want to hear politically, despite all facts, truths, and realities to the contrary. This appears to be a big part of why evangelicals support trump. They seem the most conditioned to follow their leader, no matter who or what.

He was the inevitable result of a cult the Republicans had already built. This is the obvious part of why trumpism was never about trump. He was just their first presidential candidate to so publicly stroke racist and bigoted egos by saying the right-wing quiet parts out loud with the same shameless pride they had heard for decades in conservative media; and the like-minded fell in line and love saying, “it’s about time.”

For decades, the more reality slipped away from Republicans, the more they turned into one big radio shock jock, fake wrestling, reality TV show for their supporters. In 2021, all that is left of the GOP is a party of antidemocratic, staged false flag lies, fictions and alternate realities meant to create tension, drama and outrage, that works their crowds into an emotional frenzy, solely for gaining undeserved political support, ratings, power, and extracting people’s money. Hence, once all “legitimate” parts of the GOP extraction business model failed in the 2016 presidential primaries, the powers that be took the last off-ramp before their long overdue reckoning by going with a deeply disturbed fascist con man instead of having their “come to Jesus moment.” Thus the trump cult was born.

If only there were an area of psychology that made sense of this self-serving destructive behavior and how it all connects to trump and trumpism! Well, where their whacked out, too stupid, too greedy, totally selfish, pathological lying begins, I did find an area of psychology that explains it all while studying how to rescue a friend from a sociopath’s web. In fact, everything I learned about narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths then still accurately predicts and fully answers all my GOP, trump and trumpism questions now.

So, the short answer to trumpism’s threat is clear when you know the psychology: trump is a poster child for narcissistic personality disorder at a minimum, and his followers are mostly composed of clinical narcissists and those who were individually or culturally conditioned by narcissists into having myopic, selfish, and self-serving beliefs. This forms today’s collective GOP narcissism. In other words, trumpism is narcissism.

This purposely subtle 2015 prognostication has clearly aged well.

Of course in 2015, many of us got heavy criticism for saying trump was psychologically unfit for office. What that criticism revealed was so many didn’t get what he really was: a pathological narcissist. Ironically, most of those very same people would also say, “He lies more than anyone I’ve ever heard previously.” This explained exactly why so many didn’t grasp his level of narcissism. Some of us had experienced a trump-level liar before 2015; so we understood we were dealing with a pathological liar incapable of being selfless, and he would not, or could not, stop. Like a definition of malignant, we knew he would “get progressively worse” unless stopped.

This is also why when people ask if trumpism will survive trump, they show they still don’t get what it really is. We must ask why most people don’t see trumpism is practically a textbook personality disorder that is little more than egomania, selfishness and a thirst for power, mostly fueled by insecurity, fear, and greed. Obviously, since these negative traits have always been part of humanity, until we can end trauma and grow logic and consciences in human brains, they will remain part of the human story.

To be fair, pathological narcissists sneak up on almost everyone before they are identified for being toxically abusive. They are psychologically conditioned to appear “normal,” hide in the shadows, and in plain sight with superficial charm, while we are never really taught to see the signs of these very disturbed, little-to-no-conscience sharks swimming among us.

Even Republican kingmakers didn’t take the trump threat seriously, and once he destroyed their “strong bench” in their 2016 primary, they still willingly chose to avoid their party’s reckoning with reality by embracing his corrupt clown show. They did this because their billionaire owners only care about another round of swamp judges, 1% tax cuts, corporate welfare, and no enforced corporate regulations. Apparently, what none of them saw coming was trump winning over the hearts and minds of those they had programmed, aka Republican base voters. Now, they are stuck with him as Dear Leader.

How Can We Deprogram the Cult of trump?

Why people follow and submit to these toxic manipulators is key, and there are a lot of layers here. As with the patterns of most narcissistic leaders and other grifters, the patterns of followers and “suckers” are often mostly psychological as well, which is why certain types get specifically targeted. Those who are more fearful, traumatized, insecure, or blind faith believers are among the most vulnerable because these types of people all have easy buttons toxic predators instinctively push, trigger, and manipulate.

However, the most vulnerable of all to falling under the spells of toxic manipulators are the children of narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths; because they were raised from birth to serve their primary narcissist and to see selfish behavior as normal. This is why I highly suspect that many, if not most, of trump’s supporters were children of narcissists.

This formative grooming also explains why silly little things like facts, logic, and reason don’t work on them. They were trained and conditioned to blindly follow a narcissist, just like trump was by his sociopathic father. To donny and his submissive followers, being arrogant, greedy and manipulative is just what a “smart, normal and good leader” does.

Psychology shows the phrase “trump cultism is a mental disorder” is far more accurate than most people realize. There is no doubt trump’s behavior closely aligns with the traits of narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder (sociopaths and psychopaths). Most of his followers’ behaviors closely align with those trained to follow and serve these types of pathological narcissists. Therefore, we certainly need to deprogram the ones we can.

Obviously deprogramming is a loaded word, but the American government has had to deprogram America from this kind of selfish extremism before. During World War II, the War Department put out the film “Don’t Be a Sucker” to warn about how believing racist and bigoted Nazi-type propaganda is nothing more than a fascist fool’s game; at the end of their divide-and-conquer tactics, all men and women are not created equal. And this goes against what we expect in our liberty and freedoms, and aspire to be as a just nation.

To deprogram the trump cult psychologically, there needs to be a multi-vectored, whole of society approach to combat the decades, if not centuries, of psychological conditioning and programming. We need to educate the public about how pathological narcissism affects us as a society and as individuals. We need to help families raise secure, empathetic, caring, and self-aware children so they don’t later become easy prey for manipulators.

We need to greatly reduce childhood trauma; this is the main cause and driver of pathological narcissism. We need to weed out these toxic bullies from institutions that are supposed to have empathy and a helpful regard for other humans, because narcissists are rarely capable of caring for the welfare of any other beings. We need to do many things on both macro and micro levels to deprogram. We must do this because there is no limit to how low these narcissists will go to get what they crave, as exhibited by trump.

Once people understand that almost nothing trump or Republicans say or do is surprising, the gaslighting loses a lot of its power. In fact, when people realize almost all of the trump GOP’s words and actions are extremely predictable narcissist lies and behaviors, this clarifying effect will help them identify how and when their emotional triggers are being used to manipulate them. Yes, it is all still horrific and exhausting, but knowing the patterns, and having most of the shock factors removed, makes it all less triggering and helps people stop their emotions from overriding their logic and reason.

Once someone realizes what is being sold to them is a false ego-boost illusion built on selfishness and fueled by fear, hate, insecurity, or a thirst for power, it all should start making sense but that begs the questions: Can followers handle the truth? Do they even care about the truth? Can they even understand the “personal responsibility” party is led by people who are psychologically incapable of ever taking any personal responsibility?

Sadly, for many who have survived severe narcissistic abuse, if they haven’t gone over to the dark side, narcissists can often incapacitate them by triggering very painful feelings and memories. Pathological narcissists seem instinctively like sharks to blood when it comes to pushing a survivor’s trauma, fear, and insecurity buttons. Love can certainly break through sometimes with some, but as with most cult deprogramming, it takes a lot of love, time, therapy, and healing and many victims are conditioned to believe kindness is a weakness the “strong” should exploit. My personal motto in this effort is be kind, be friendly, be helpful, but don’t be a sucker, because takers will take as long as givers give.

Can We Deprogram Them?

I’ve listened to, and read, thousands of people’s stories of dealing with narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, and a commonality in many survivor stories is that good, kind, and smart people never imagined that anyone could lie, manipulate, and use others so cruelly and shamelessly for their own selfish and evil purposes, until it was too late for them to easily walk away. For most pathological narcissists, their first goal is to get their hooks in before the prey realizes they have been trapped in a nightmare. I get why empathic folks believe love conquers all, but that is because the shamelessness of those lacking consciences is nearly incomprehensible to people who only believe in, and strive for, human kindness.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen more than a token attempt at conscience from a Republican politician for a very long time, and pretty much every time I run MAGA or GOP policies through narcissist, sociopath, and psychopath trait prisms and factor in the minions they groom, bribe, or blackmail, it all aligns perfectly. It’s all about psychological patterns of manipulation by using people’s fears and traumas against them to gain wealth, power, and domination they believe will protect them and fill the emptiness where their souls are buried or supposed to be. We really need to understand there are those among us who are nothing more than a rogue’s gallery of swamp creatures.

We need to understand that these narcissists are the people who “can’t handle the truth” because their egos don’t like, or can’t handle, reality; so they must tell more lies to justify previous lies. They do this as they create alternate realities. Unfortunately, most experts agree therapy only teaches pathological narcissists how to manipulate the system better because therapy rarely works on the unwilling or those who believe there is nothing wrong with them. There is an exception to this axiom; some who have borderline personality disorders recognize they have self-destructive habits and can accept help making better choices to live better lives.

It all comes down to the most traumatized, selfish, and the fearful. Can they be reasoned out of it with a lot of understanding, love, and therapy, or are they pathologically mentally locked into who they are via conditioning and/or brain wiring? Pathological pretty much means uncontrollable habit. Pathological narcissism is in essence compulsive self-serving behavior so their entire purpose in life is to fill an empty hole they can never fill. That is why there is no bottom to the depths these greedy, toxic abusers will go, and there is little to nothing society can do to help them change. What we can do is wisely limit the damage.

Considering many have been groomed for generations and psychopathy can be hereditary, we must recognize some among us are both soft and hard-wired to be selfish, cruel, and “evil,” and then act accordingly. So as we spend the time, money, and resources trying to deprogram aspects of people’s unhealthy narcissism, we also need to do our best to determine which deplorables are redeemable and which are irredeemable.

As for the debate about whether someone is a clinical narcissist or not, if they consistently have little to no empathy, shame, guilt, remorse, or conscience in nearly all their dealings, what’s the difference? Who cares if they meet a clinical definition or not when the resulting traumas and damages they do to others and society are the same?

Our main takeaways should be that there are very consistent patterns of well-established psychological personality disorders threatening our economy, security, and democracy; because when choosing between public good and what helps them, those afflicted will always choose what helps them. And we can’t solve America’s biggest problems until this is seriously addressed from multiple vectors, like containing them with firm legal barriers. Indeed, pathological narcissism is perhaps humankind’s greatest hidden epidemic, and maybe the worst of them all since it seems to be the source of most trauma and the root of all evil.

On the bright side, despite being master manipulators, nefarious narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths will usually fail in the end because they don’t distinguish between their fantasies and reality. Eventually, they reveal themselves as delusional. The question is when they have taken over a main political party, will countries have the knowledge, resources, and political will to stop them? They will never willingly stop. They will always give you two choices: submit or rebel. What’s it going to be, America?

Sam Ray © 2021-2023

Be sure to check out the amazingly deep comment section of trumpism is Narcissism.