People have been saying that, when dealing with Trump (and the GOP), we have to maintain our civility, our dignity, our sense of discourse. And it occurs to me that there's something they don't know about the situation that's key.
Trump is a narcissist. (Is there anyone other than a Trump supporter that doesn't know this by now?) But what a lot of these let's-stay-civil types don't know is how narcissists work. (Chances are they've never had to deal with one up close and personal before.)
Narcissists don't see anyone else as real. We're not important. What's important to them is winning. There is no honor, no civility, nothing; it's all about them. This is why there's all the lying that we've already seen, much of which takes the "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes" form of gaslighting. ("No, I didn't make fun of a disabled reporter," for example.) And when caught in one lie, they'll lie again, frequently within seconds of the first lie. I've experienced this personally and you can watch the orange shitgibbon do the same thing.
The problem is that the let's-be-civil types are working on the idea that "Well, Trump is a human being, there's some place where we can work with him, some deal we can make, some contract of behavior/interaction that we can spell out minutely enough that will nail him down to something we can depend on," and the short answer is "No." You simply cannot do this. (Want proof? How many times has he fucked over contractors/business partners? Look at the list of 5000+ lawsuits against him that the NY Times compiled shortly before the election. Wouldn't you think that's a record for someone so... successful?) You need to go back to the basic concept: we don't exist except as a backdrop to the narcissist's beliefs that it's All About Them.
Keep this in mind: There isn't anything you can do to deal with a narcissist.
Nothing.
Zero.
Zip.
You can offer them the moon and they'll take it, but you can't depend on them to do what they agreed to, even for the moon. In fact, many of them will make a POINT of screwing you on the deal if only to prove that they can and you're not as important as them. Therefore, any attempt to deal with them is automatically doomed to failure.
Even worse, narcissists count on you being civil, being nice, not being ready for them. They're lying in wait for you and they will immediately start the games as soon as you show up.
So, what does work when dealing with narcissists?
Ignoring them when possible. (We can't in this case, alas.)
Scorn.
Mockery.
Public humiliation on as big a scale as can be managed.
You cannot "reach" a narcissist--they are completely unfixable--and anything based on the idea of "Oh, but they're human, there's some good in them, we should be nice because WE are people and should be nicer than them" is going to get you fucked over. And fucked over again. And again. Until you damn well sane up and get to the idea that there is Only One Thing that will stop a narcissist, you're going to have "Victim" on your forehead. And the narcissist will always take advantage of that.
One of the helpful things is that narcissists really don't have a lot of game. Oh, they're clever enough at the gaslighting they do, but they're not really inventive nor, usually, terribly bright, either. They'll copy and steal whatever gag works, but they aren't original. Honestly, they rarely need to be. All those hotel deals gone bad are always the same, have you noticed? There's nothing new about them except the latest crop of victims. Other than that, they're the same old tired gag each time. Watch them and make mental notes. The first narcissist I knew tipped his hand by telling me the same story from his past in four slightly different versions over the course of maybe a year. Each time it was supposedly an exact recollection. And I started watching very, very closely at that point.
I've known two narcissists in my life of Trump's caliber. One's dead--yay!--and one's still alive. I've seen all the behaviors that Trump is exhibiting up close and personal and I know exactly what needs to be done with narcissists. I no longer waste time in thinking that there may be some way to reach them, some way to deal with them, some way to accept them as a person, because they're unreachable, untrustworthy, and not really "people." And the sooner you all get to this level of understanding and stop being "nice" and start mocking and scorning the orange shitgibbon at every possible turn, the better off you'll be, too.
You may say "But we'll be no better than he is, then!" Actually, yes, you will, always. You're automatically better because you care about other people. What you're doing is isolating a major disease vector and squeezing it out of existence in the only way possible. It's impervious to anything else. It's okay to be unhappy that you have to do this, but you're simply not allowed to kill people like this, so mockery, scorn, and laughing and pointing are the tools you have. Use them.
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