Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Toxic Masculinity, Faust’s Bargain, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Republicans: They Just Want Money and Power
The term gaslighting derives from theatre and film. Patrick Hamilton’s play Gas Light (1938) was adapted as the British film Gaslight in 1940 and the American classic of the same name in 1944. To this day, Gaslight, a reference to the flickering gaslights featured in the drama, remains a masterclass on how one predatory partner captivates and then slowly undermines the other.
Trump is a master at it, having been pathologically gaslighted by his own father — made to chant “I am a killer; I am king….” over and over in childhood along with his brothers, shamed and undermined if exhibiting less than total enthusiasm for the proposal. At this point, with he and his cabal having had at the nation for over four years, America has been well and truly gaslighted, made victim to a world-class, liberally shared, Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder writ very large.
These three, pictured above, were consummately educated in ivy league colleges — in law, political science, etc. With these guys, it’s a case of toxic masculinity ramped up to murderous ambition, which, at this point, has become their ‘nature.’ “Character is destiny,” as the philosopher proclaimed, and these guys MUST go down as criminal seditionists, or the U.S. is resoundingly fucked, having embraced its ‘destiny,’ walked down the aisle, and gotten married to it. Their failure is of emotional and/or moral intelligence — the philosophical or ethical cluelessness cluelessness involved in voluntarily making a deal with the devil. If they’d read Faust — Marlowe’s, Goethe’s or the original (c.1580) ‘Faustbook’ itself — they’d have a moral clue.
If they, or at least some of them, had only stuck by their original, authentic responses to the dangers posed by giving real power to Trump: ‘In 2016 [Ted] Cruz criticized Trump more than any of his fellow lawmakers, calling Trump “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen” and accurately saying Trump is “a pathological liar.” He adeptly explained, “he doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies… in a pattern that is straight out of a psychology textbook, he accuses everyone of lying.” It was a stunning piece of foresight into the next four years of Trumpism. Cruz went further, saying, “Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it… the man is utterly amoral… Donald is a bully… bullies don’t come from strength; they come from weakness.”’
Cruz folded, of course, like a pack of cards — like a cheap suit, playing, like his Republican fellows, to the gallery (or, more accurately, to the violent mob). They’re playing to the audience Trump has assembled for them — not the affluent educated ones, who, like themselves, have no ideology, ethics, morals or actual beliefs, but are mere corporate shills and predators; they’re playing to the uneducated base that has been captivated by a pack of lies and manipulation since NBC launched Trump as a legitimate businessman and celebrity in ‘The Apprentice’ (to their lasting shame). They wanted to keep this going far into the 21st century to benefit the elite, affluent and entitled corporate White Male Power Structure they so comfortably belong to. With this goal, they have failed utterly and resoundingly, fatally, shot themselves in the foot. All three of the miscreants face calls for their resignation and worse:
‘…Most recently, Cruz led the push to object to the 2020 election results. He repeatedly echoed Trump’s demand to “stop the steal,” a slogan that became a rallying cry at the Capitol riot in Washington, D.C., on January 6 that left at least five people dead. Now Cruz faces accusations alongside Trump of fomenting an attempted coup and encouraging the violent rioters. His aides are abandoning him, and the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security has recommended that he be placed on the FBI’s “no-fly” list. Like McConnell, Cruz owes the nation an explanation for his backing of a destructive demagogue who has left the nation and its democratic institutions battered and reeling. Has it all been worth it for the Texas senator?…’ (Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute, ‘Republicans knew they were making a deal with the devil — now they’re paying for it,’ January 16, 2021)
In the case of these and many other elected Republican representatives, they are so cynical, it is questionable if they even signify as more that cyphers at this point. They knew each and every one of the 60-odd fallacious law suits were absurd, and doomed to fail, but they lusted to sign-on. To gain the support, and avoid the violence, abuse and dismissal, of that sad, mercenary or deluded base. They know the cult is one of their own making — having cultivated it for decades of propagandizing and gerrymandering — and they’re afraid of it. Hopped-up on fear-based delusion and evangelical hysteria, high on fear and loathing of the ‘Other,’ Trump’s base now threatens them.
Lindsey Graham originally stood firm in his condemnation of Trump as a presidential candidate, as a man, and as a human being, as other Republicans begin to capitulate by either directly endorsing Trump, or saying they will vote for “the Republican nominee,” despite his undeniable escalation towards violence. “He took our problems in 2012 with Hispanics and made them far worse by espousing forced deportation. Looking back, we should have basically kicked him out of the party. The more you know about Donald Trump, the less likely you are to vote for him. The more you know about his business enterprises, the less successful he looks. The more you know about his political giving, the less Republican he looks. We should have done this months ago. I think this whole assault on his credentials of being a successful businessman and being a true Republican conservative is beginning to work.”
Since Trump’s Presidential campaign announcement in 2015, Graham repeatedly warned about the dangers Trump posed not only to the Republican Party, but to America as a whole:
July 2015: “I think [Donald Trump is] uninformed about the situation regarding the illegal immigrant population. I think he has hijacked the debate. I think he is a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican party with the Hispanic community and we need to push back.”
August 2015: “Well, Donald Trump’s plan on immigration is stupid. I find him offensive. His solution is just constitutionally flawed. It’s not practical. I don’t think there’s 10 votes in the United States Senate for this plan. I promise you no Democrat’s going to vote for this, I certainly wouldn’t vote for it. You’re not going to get 11 million people out of this country. That’s just not practical, that’s going to kill the Republican Party. It’s self-deportation on steroids.”
September 2015: “I think the wall Donald Trump is building is between us and Hispanics.”
December 2015: A Trump nomination “would be an utter, complete and total disaster. If you’re a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot, you’re going to have a hard time being president of the United States, and you’re going to do irreparable damage to the party.”
December 2015: “You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represents the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. … He’s the ISIL man of the year.”
December 2015: “I believe Donald Trump is destroying the Republican chances to win an election that we can’t afford to lose. I believe we’re losing the Hispanic vote because they think we don’t like them…I believe Donald Trump is destroying the Republican Party.”
January 2016, on choosing between Trump or Cruz: “It’s like being shot or poisoned. What does it really matter?”
March 2016: “The bottom line is that I believe Donald Trump would be an absolute, utter disaster for the Republican Party, destroy conservatism as we know it. We’d get wiped out, and it would take generations to overcome a Trump candidacy. Here is why we’re losing the Hispanic vote. Nobody is going to listen to you about your economic plan or your ability to defend the nation if you’re going to deport their grandmother. This is why we’re getting killed with Hispanics. And Mr. Trump has taken every problem we have had with Hispanics and poured gasoline on it.”
March 2016: “If Trump is the standard bearer, it’s not about 2016, it’s about losing the heart and soul of the conservative movement. I’m not going to stand behind a guy that gets David Duke’s support. What is it about Trump’s campaign that David Duke likes? I don’t think he is a reliable conservative Republican. So it’s no longer about winning the election for me, it’s trying to salvage a party that I love and conservatism as I know it.”
April 2016, on running as Trump’s VP: “That’s like buying a ticket on the Titanic.”
May 2016: “When it comes to women and Hispanics, Trump polls like Lucifer.”
May 2016: “I…cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as Commander in Chief. I think Donald Trump is going to places where very few people have gone and I’m not going with him. Eating a taco is probably not going to fix the problems we have with Hispanics. I think embracing Donald Trump is embracing demographic death.”
When reports first surfaced that Graham may be secretly backing Trump they were believable because, like so many other Republicans, he was getting behind the party’s front runner no matter what. Since then, of course, he’s gotten right down on his knees to the psychopath. His credibility, and the credibility of America on the world stage, have been irretrievably damaged. As Graham himself said of the Trump candidacy in 2016, “Any time you leave a bad idea or a dangerous idea alone, any time you ignore what could become an evil force, you wind up regretting it.”
The GOP seems determined to mutate into something barely recognizable as itself — the realization of all the toxic detritus of its own ‘conservative’ delusions. A zombie party. This beast is way, way worse, more malignant, more vast in its import and scope — and more terrifying — than Frankenstein’s monstrous creation.
