Right in front of our dog and everybody the Evangelicals fell head over heels in love with a lying little boy who could not grow up. Similarly afflicted followers pretending to be the adults in the room have been caught red-handed like mean spirited children playing naughty games. Our conservative ruling classes’ credibility that shared the stage with QAnon, MAGA, Pizzagate, anti-vaxxer, and deep state hoax fantasies lies in ruins. Democracy’s crown jewels of free elections and peaceful transition of power, once thought to be sacrosanct now must be laboriously rebuilt from the ground up.
Oh how we love our blaming. We accuse and wonder how in the heck can people say do many stupid things and have so many stupid ideas? How could they be so stupid? Aren’t the leaders more responsible because they are so stupid? Even more stupidly, calling names only serves to bond flocks of followers ever more tightly to their masters. The flock knows that the people leading them around by the nose are certainly not stupid. But there is a fatal flaw hidden in the questions. The answers will never have anything to do with stupidity. Damaged leaders and the people that follow them are extremely intelligent. Their stupid rhetoric and behavior is not a lack of IQ. Crucially, it is a shortfall of empathy. In cases of extreme zealotry emotional damage in life’s first few years makes for a livelong deficit of conscience and cognition. Remember the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski? Poor Theodore. He is brilliantly whip smart but doomed to failure because he is stuck in a state of arrested development. With conscience impairment, he can never be bright. According to Elizabeth Mika MA, LCPC, a Clinical Psychologist and one of the leaders in psychology’s Girl Power movement, such afflictions are failures of cognition. Others so affected but more socially skilled than he is can be charismatic and beloved for decades. Covert and void of conscience with an insatiable desire for power they rope others into their grandiose schemes. And many good people’s lives are shattered.
There is least one such a covert leader in Houston who also schemes for drama and power. For people such as he is, shame and paranoia can be psychological languages. Unable to face the feelings of guilt he and others like Donald learn early on to be masterful actors, playing a character who is without flaw. They create false selves merely to survive. Incapable of self examination their contradictions become so overpowering they lose themselves. With no place for their shame to go, their accusations become projected confessions. Crooked Hillary. Lock her up. Stop the Steal. Leaders with these traits can never be satisfied with any level of control. These false selves must create an equally false reality, a fantasy world inside our consensus reality to preserve their illusory existence. The most toxic of these unfortunate people hate the truth and must lie constantly to keep their reality bubble inflated. These are the unrealities in which cults grow. To such a person people are just assets, game pieces on a board, and carefully studied cardboard cutouts existing only for the purpose of the self. The puppets are secretly hated by the Puppet Master even as he desperately needs them and their attention every single moment of his life. Mental health care professionals call this attention “supply”. The toddler trapped inside the False Self must have his supply. He learns to manipulate people to obtain it like a Master Puppeteer. Without it he would crumble within from despair. Cruelty and even negative attention is the supply that lifts the fearful Puppeteer’s sour mood out of the doldrums. With layers and contradictions come many secrets that must be kept.
Do you enjoy a blue sky with fluffy white clouds and the birds singing? To the Puppeteer it is attention and the rumination of his victims that brings his special sunny day. Helplessness felt by puzzled host targets is sucked up with zest as feel good sauce. As a national security risk, Putin is a sadistic parasite seeking delicious supply at scale. Sycophants are slaves to their own disorders and Trump’s “flying monkeys” gather supply for themselves and the Boss. The same patterns have repeated for countless millennia. Disordered people seek this fuel in private as they blame others in public. Domestic abusers calculate that no one will believe you when you tell the world of bizarre nonsensical cruelties. This is called “reactive abuse”. They want you to be publicly branded as crazy for feeling as you do, ignored and hurt as they where when they were little. As it is said, hurt people hurt people. School shooters, the most extreme hurters in search of supply find analgesic ecstasy in the noisy cries around them, escaping from their own dismal life at the end of their bloody feeding frenzy. Rooted as these problems are in our evolutionary past these things were with us before humans descended the trees to live under overhanging rocks. The real adults in the room understand that underlying structures in our psychology and physiology must be recognized or we are done for. The choice is simple. We must solve this ancient problem or our technology will turn against us.
“This is the case where narcissistic pathology of an individual colludes with the needs of his similarly afflicted supporters. This process of narcissistic collusion is what fuels the growth of anti-democratic parties as well as cults and other destructive social movements.” Elizabeth Mika
Normal in every appearance, destructive people have long been called too many different names to be easily understood. But thanks to generations of mental healthcare professionals in the last century a name was found, one borrowed from the ancient Greeks; one that will in a more enlightened age to come will replace the archaic term ’Evil’. Using newer concepts will promote more granulated understandings and paths toward solutions. We simply can’t go around and around like this for more centuries. But this is not about a pretty boy staring at his reflection in a pool, or someone who loves to be on stage, or who preens hair with product. Mental health care professionals have discovered the cause of humanity’s cruelty to humanity. Writ small as it is here, my tale you hold in your hand is trivial; nothing more than an infinitesimal droplet stolen away into a vast sea of human suffering and despair.
But now a mask has fallen away and revealed the faces that bring us a new regional flavor to savor on the narcissistic shit-sicle, another grandiose outside the box idea: Passive aggressive vigilanteism, courtesy of a Houston area franchise. Think neighborhood watch lists with extra helpings of mean spirited gaslighting and hypocrisy often implemented by young adults, offsprings of immigrants, and even other people of color. Supported by siphoned resources from a network of churches around the world, flocks of faithful followers have co-created a nationwide infrastructure of self styled design. To understand these local ballers and shot callers please forget for a moment all you know you about crime. These people have ample resources and don’t seek the material things of this world. Zealots have no doubt that their motivations are pure as they work for the Lord to protect society’s most vulnerable. But the Puppeteer’s fingerprints have been seen and they are straight out of the textbooks. They can be seen in the way the Puppet Master leverages fear to send his flying monkeys out in military like precision to play dirty tricks on confused targets for his amusement. The way he manipulates his flock and their admiration as sources of supply like a toddler seeking attention. The way his flying monkeys love love love to passively create doubt and confusion as if it is their idea. This is how hierarchies in cults work. Well aware of where the cracks in society are and careful not to violate laws so that straight cops not in on the joke will respond, a leadership subgroup consumes supply to regulate their emotions. And every blow against the demons that don’e exist such as those that tortured nonexistent innocent children in the nonexistent basement of Comet Ping Pong pizza brings temporary relief.
But our local covert Texas master is, for a narcissist, is uncommonly sociable (see Dr. Todd Grande’s links below) and he does not want to be seen as a Puppeteer because that would be the end of him. Playing the part of a kind altruistic father figure is exhausting over the long hours a day for he has many secrets that he carries, and the truth must always be hidden. Cruel when he is guaranteed anonymity he plays his role like an actor behind a mask, a mask that he dare never let fall or people will see a parasitic controller who can never be alone and must have people obey and ruminate about him just to have a feeling of sustenance. Fearful of being discovered, and gifted with a wicked sense of humor, his monkeys specialize in unbelievable absurdities. The explanations targets are forced to relay to friends, family and law enforcement are clearly designed to be laughably ridiculous and dismissed. This is a form of the MetaLogic of Absurdity. “Reactive abuse” is the technical term for when the one being abused strikes back and is made out to be unstable. Long recognized by mental health care professionals, this working method provides reliable protection for bad actors.
Like the childish fools who tried to overturn our democracy, the authority of these self anointed few rests on fantasy and say so. Disdainful of the constitution, the Rule of Law, and (with all their faults) the Founding Fathers’ wisdom of presumption of innocence, the right to face one’s accuser, and due process, cults have put us on the precipice of an authoritarian abyss. Oblivious that Democracy was created to be against personality disorders, dire warnings from mental health professionals have long gone unheeded. Heads up. This stubborn and obsessed vigilante Texas group operates with, among others, well-intentioned folks fighting child sex trafficking. Operating without public accountability is contrary to reason. Lacking trust of the authorities, zealots don’t see that groups operating on primitive authoritarian principles can never protect children. Not all narcissists are pedophiles, but pedophiles are always narcissists. And neither pedophiles nor narcissists can pray away the cray.
TIN FOIL HAT CREDIBILITY CHECK
Paranoids are missing important elements in their narratives; so some questions are in order: The government is after you? Really? What did you do? What happened that caused the government to come after you? Those proposed fact patterns are unlikely as the government is an ally for those who support the Rule of Law. The initiating event here was reported to the FBI in 2017 under the penalty of criminal prosecution. This is not a game and those with QAnon and Pizzagate style fantasies that use power without accountability will be held accountable.
The techniques of this Texas based religious group are more sophisticated than this similar group described in this United Nations Office of the High Commissioner Report. Heads up. This is not based in theory. This is experiential. This is real:
https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Torture/Call/Individuals/Harrassmenttechniques.pdf
THE COMMUNAL NARCISSIST
The Communal Narcissist: "Trust Me, I'm Really On Your Side"
Dr. Les Carter Phd. Psychotherapist
“They want to show themselves as being the most trustworthy person you have ever met… they… champion social justice causes”… friends and family members will come to you and say this is such a nice person…I want you to join my club…they have a wide network of people that if you start turning sour on they’ll turn sour on you publicly… as you go deeper you learn that there is a whole double life that they have.
They can imply that they are such a virtuous good person and then you learn there is some hidden rebellion…this communal narcissist can be somebody that upfront seems like oh what a nice person so be aware. BEWARE”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDVZHASEwn4
10 SIGNS OF A COMMUNAL NARCISSIST
Dr. Todd Grande
Dr. Grande is arguably the most scientific of mental health care professionals presented here. He notes that grandiose narcissists seek to satisfy their core grandiosity, esteem, power and entitlement often through agentic means. So to understand the idea of communal narcissism we first need to understand the difference between agency and communion. With agency we see the (more typical) grandiose narcissist demonstrates high grandiosity by exaggerating their competence, ambition, intelligence, creativity, influence, extraversion, uniqueness and attractiveness which are all characteristics of the agentic domain. They are egotistic. They are antisocial and believe that others exist for them. For many years it was believed that there was only one expression of grandiose narcissism, the agentic. The idea of communal narcissism was thought of as an oxymoron. But recent research has shown that there is a smaller group of grandiose narcissists that have high grandiosity in communal domains! In fact further even more recent research confirms that pathological narcissism fits in an agency/communion model. The pathological communal narcissist simultaneously pursues self enhancement and self transcendence, no longer thought of as being at opposite ends on the same continuum. Here are the ten characteristics of (pathological) communal narcissism:
1. Communal narcissists tend to have low scores on psychopathic and Machiavellian traits.
2. They secretly want power even though they are motivated by approval. They often utilize volunteers.
3. Communal narcs can convert to agentic narcissists but less commonly revert from agentic to communal.(Our boy may be a bit of a rare bird if he has found a way to achieve agentic goals in a communal setting.)
4. Somebody becomes a communal narcissist instead of an agentic narcissist because of environmental factors. So both communal and agentic narcissists may share common genetic factors but communal narcissists developed because they had a different environment. (Epigenetic factors? A long term religious communal environment?)
5. Validating the success of a communal narcissist with praise and support may make them move toward agentic narcissism to meet their need for grandiosity. This is counter productive because communal narcissists are thought to be less destructive than the agentic variety.
6. They tend to make statements that contain narcissistic and pro-social elements together. They will rather incongruously combine narcissistic phrases with terms of altruism, agreeableness and helpfulness.
7. Communal narcissism has been associated with peer reported aggression.
8. Both agentic and communal narcissists have about the same level of mental health distress. The communal narc may not be content with their method satisfying their need for grandiosity.
9. Communal narcissism is actually distinct from vulnerable narcissism. Vulnerable narcissism appears to be completely unrelated to communal narcissism. With the communal narcissist we would not expect to see shame resentfulness hypersensitivity to criticism pessimism or distrust. Communal narcissism is positively associated with trust which is one of the most confusing expressions of the expression of narcissism but it is what we see in the research literature.
10. The communal narcissist is well liked. Agentic narcissists tend to be disliked. Communals have the highest level of likability of the three categories: agentic, communal and non-narcissist!
Dr. Grande sums up by suggesting HCH, the hypocritical communion hypothesis which is there is a self deceptive component to narcissism. The communal narcissists would have a distorted view of their own communion as a form of self-deception and self-deception is extremely common with narcissism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bymqKLv6jGA
NARCISSISM A HALLMARK OF RELIGIOUS ABUSERS
CATHOLIC SENTINEL
Ed Langlois Rev.Ken Garrett, pastor of Grace Church in Southwest Portland
https://catholicsentinel.org/MobileContent/Faith-Spirituality/Living-Faith/Article/Narcissism-a-hallmark-of-religious-abusers-/4/29/38563
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING A NARCISSIST
Elizabeth Mika was prescient and has stated that these things have been known to professionals for decades. If society would value psychology more untold suffering and the loss of much blood and treasure can be avoided.
https://medium.com/@Elamika/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-a-narcissist-251ec901dae7
THE MYTH OF GANG-STALKING
Dr. Todd Grande
Gang-stalking very likely doesn't exist according to Dr. Todd Grande PhD. He describes several characteristics that credible accounts of narcissistic abuse have that this account of the Houston network has, notably a plausible precipitating cause which in this case has been reported to law enforcement under threat of penalty of imprisonment for false testimony.
NARCISSIST SHAPE SHIFTERS AND THEIR HATRED TOWARD YOU
Dr. Carmen Bryant Ed.D, LMHC
“They study you.” “Once they lock onto a prey they will do anything to pursue that prey.” They study how you live so that they manipulate you for the thing they need more than anything in the world. This thing is called narcissistic supply. Unable to confront what lurks within themselves, they project their attributes on you. They hide their true nature. “They want to keep you confused. They love confusion.” They are confused. They don’t have love and don’t have empathy. “They are the most confusing people you will ever meet in the world.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoql_z-7gak
7 CONFUSION GAMES NARCISSISTS LOVE TO PLAY
Dr. Les Carter Phd. describes how deliberate confusion is a technique for dominance. They use it as a means to control people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-nq1Nzn1xs
HOW NARCISSISTS LIVE DAY TO DAY
This is what narcissists do. They are tracking. They are always keeping tabs and watching. At each and every moment that is what they are doing and thinking. And scheming. Some like to sit and scheme just for the sake of scheming. They like schemes, they like plans they carry out to fool people without them knowing. This is their bread and butter. That is really their sustenance. That really builds them up and makes them the mastermind, the puppet master and the controlling overseer that is fooling everyone and nobody can pick up on it because they are inferior beings and the narcissist is so strong and overpowering. And the cover story is that they are such good people. Victims in their own right from early abuse narcissists must use these strategies to just survive and are forever caught in a stage of arrested development. They are fundamentally children pretending to be adults. Narcissists are sadistic and sadly trapped in fear they never understand, most never change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQfVb7kV0N0
HOW TO DEAL WITH GASLIGHTING
Ariel Leve You Tube TED Archive May 15, 2017
“Right now the world is experiencing what I experienced every day as a child. There is chaos. There is confusion. Everything is upside down. Reality is being canceled. And nothing means anything. The term gaslighting refers to when someone manipulates you into questioning your own sanity.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4P2Qwh1QCU
HOW NARCISSISTS FAKE GOOD CHARACTER
They act is if they have great character. They pretend that they are the ones with unshakable ironclad principles and values. As they see it that is what good people do. Those are the ones they pretend to be like and want to displace, the good people, people of good principles, good and noble principles and intentions. But it is an illusion. It is not about doing good. It is about making people think they are doing good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QmM5gaAKr8
LIVES OF CRUEL, COLD BETRAYALS
Few clinicians describe the pernicious effects of male narcissists on women (which can drag on for years) better than Dr. Linda Martinez-Lewi. Note the lack of a conscience and the thrill that the narcissist feels when his daily craving and suffering, the depression and fear of who and what he inwardly really is eases as the soothing narcissistic supply kicks in.
Linda Martinez-Lewi Ph.D Narcissistic Personality Clinical Expert
Author of Freeing Yourself from the Narcissist in Your Life and Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist
The reader is encouraged to view her videos especially those that want to learn from a woman’s point of view. She is excellent in that regard.
NARCISSISM THAT ONE SECOND
From the man with a pathologically narcissistic mother, a description of the moment when the narcissists hurts and degrades. The squinty eyes, twisted grin and the relief in the second the narcissist gets temporary relief from her inner demons by lying and hurting her own son. This short lived relief is called narcissistic supply. Narcissists will crave narcissistic supply until they draw their last breath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr6ztIjfxoY
PEDOPHILE NARCISSIST: NARCISSISM, PEDOPHILIA, AND HEBEPHILIA
Prof. Sam Vaknin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHZDEUVt9OI
EIGHT LIES THE NARCISSIST WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE
Dr. Les Carter Phd. Psychotherapist
Narcissists tell many lies and they put those lies on others. Narcissists have constructed a great deal of falsehoods that they use to support their lives. It is important to realize that these are fear (and shame) based people. They compensate for those fears by creating a false self. As they live in their false self they create many falsehoods and then put them on others, expecting them to believe these falsehoods. They don’t respect truth or hold themselves accountable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrHTE--jMfQ
PSYCHOPATHS, NARCISSISTS, SADISTS AND CHILD ABUSERS
https://www.pinterest.nz/frichardson/psychopaths-narcissists-sadists-and-child-abusers/
OVERCOME NARCISSISTS WITH THE INFORMATION THEY HIDE FROM YOU
From the amiable millennial experiencer Scott Bassett, born into a narcissistic family, whose work complements and is consistent with psychotherapists and other professionals: “They get to be a puppet master without being seen as a puppet master.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DBZa55atGQ
RELIGIOUS NARCISSISTS
Dr. Les Carter Phd Psychotherapist
When you approach your religious attitudes and practices do you do so with a regulatory mindset or do you do so out of love?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBTwD5Nmyzg
TOXIC PEOPLE, RELIGION, & SPIRITUALITY
Dr. Ramani Durvasula Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology California State University. L.A.
Religions are havens for toxic people. One of the highest rates of narcissism is in the clergy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S5BtjpF9dA
NARCISSISTS AND DYSFUNCTIONAL PEOPLE THINK AND WORK IN
CONSPIRACIES
They work together to hurt people. It is a question of how many people they hurt when they go down. They will work together to be mean because they get a kick from it. In his other videos Scott mentions how narc leadership can be so smart, competent, reasonable, rational and convincing in everyday conversation but in the end when it all collapses, the result is the unveiling of sheer insanity. Narcissists are, as Scott Bassett who was raised in a narcissistic family says “hospital grade crazy.” Elsewhere, Scott has noted that narcissists love to play tricks from childhood like “disturbed unemployed magicians". This so precisely describes the situation here that it simply cannot be a coincidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4JoVSJFRVg
FLYING MONKEYS (THE NARCISSIST’S TOOL FOR THE SMEAR CAMPAIGN)
“Why does the narcissist use the flying monkeys?”
First of all they like to discredit the witness. They like to discredit you so that you don’t reveal your truth or so that maybe you’ll just be so ashamed and terrified that you won’t say anything, instead you’ll just swallow it. “The benefit of the horror of this whole experience is that you learn who your true friends and allies are.”
It is worth noting that enablers don’t even have to know the overseer narcissist personally. There can be degrees of separation. Enablers keep other enablers in line. In fact, it is optimal if overseer can make the enablers think that they are the one that came up with a given idea. In those cases in which the enablers don’t know the full story of how they are being manipulated the do-gooder narc is able to sit back and just watch, cited by mental health professionals as another common activity for dominant narcs. After the narc has developed a network of carefully chosen vulnerable people around himself (in a process Texas psychologist Dr. Daniel J Fox calls “enlistment”) he can just sit back and watch the drama or hear a recounting of the chaos as he sucks in and relishes the fresh narcissistic supply.
https://medium.com/@OwnYourReality/flying-monkeys-the-narcissists-tool-for-the-smear-campaign-798daf7a59c0
WHAT’S GASLIGHTING? (INDIVIDUAL, TRIBE AND SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING)
Dr. Ramani Durvasula Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology California State University. L.A.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTS5XsZe9Jg
Gaslighting is one of the narcissist’s favorite tricks and is what happens when one person tries to trick another person into doubting their understanding of their reality. It is a form of emotional abuse. Time is our most precious commodity and abuse at which our local group is well skilled is a form of stealing. Dr. Ramani cites examples of tribal and societal gaslighting. Her view is that narcissism is growing exponentially. Perhaps the term exponentially may be an exaggeration but, given our recent history, has to be directionally correct
WHY NARCISSISM IS THE “SECONDHAND SMOKE” OF MENTAL HEALTH
Dr. Ramani Durvasula Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology California State University. L.A.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K784y_gwXUo
In this video Dr. Durvasula presents a compelling case for increasing narcissism as a societal trend.
In closing, it is important to restate that no-one is being diagnosed here. Descriptive terms such as narcissistic and nouns such as narcissism should be part of everyone’s vocabulary. Terms used to diagnose other pathologies such as personality disorders and psychopathies are suited for professional use.