Comments of the Day: Don the Con’s Pathological Narcissism

these comments appeared in response to a Paul Krugman column titled, “Trump’s Deadly Narcissism”

Richard Luettgen

is a trusted commenter New Jersey September 29, 2017

Jefferson and Hamilton could have been characterized as “narcissists”, although their intellects likely shielded them from the worst consequences. Then again, one theory about the motivation for the duel with Burr that resulted in Hamilton’s death could have been a carelessness on Hamilton’s part occasioned by narcissistic over-confidence.

Garfield was by all accounts a narcissist, although any threat to us was cut rather short by his assassination. LBJ was more transparently a narcissist than any other person who served as president before Trump. Even more than Bill Clinton, which is going some.

By one way or another, we survived all of them. It’s likely we’ll survive Trump, as well.

It’s entertaining that for so many years a majority of Americans disapproved of Barack Obama as president and Paul dismissed those polls with contempt. Now, of course, similar polls on Trump have taken on a miraculous legitimacy. Quelle surprise.

Paul first admits that it’s hard to quantify the federal response to the very real humanitarian crises in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, then criticizes it anyway, blaming Trump’s “narcissism”. He might at least await Monday’s column, when we’re likely to know a lot more about what’s being done; but that wouldn’t support a charge of narcissistic neglect today. Quelle ne fut pas ma surprise.

bb

Washington DC September 29, 2017

Richard,
I am professionally qualified to tell you that narcissism is of different types, and that Trump’s narcissism is of such severity and of such a nature that it relies on active aggression and active denial of reality. In fact, it is psychotic in that it is driven by a grandiosity that will not be defeated, and that grandiosity denies reality, creates its own fantasy assertion of reality, and asserts and projects that, as he must always feel superordinate. This response is meant to be brief and in plain English. It is plainly observable that Trump does these things, and that his problems of thought and subsequent behavior are incomparable to any known predecessor.