I have mentioned before writers have a strange perspective. A case in point would be the riot in Washington DC. There has been much talk about the deep divisions in the United States. That’s not borne out by the vote totals. The totals are about in the same range as most presidential elections. A few elections were lost by a large margin, such as Jimmy Carter versus Ronald Reagan. As a writer, I ask myself what is different. The difference is our current president. He exhibits signs of narcissism. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, narcissism is named after – “Narcissus, in Greek mythology, the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. He was distinguished for his beauty.” He ends up falling in love with his reflection in a pool of water. Experts in the mental health field tell us they’re all sorts of flavors of individuals with narcissism. Narcissists are a danger to those around them because of these characteristics. For example, they believe they are truly exceptional. They are willingly deceptive – translated: they lie. They think that the rules don’t apply to them because they are exceptional. If you’d like to know more about narcissism, just plug that word into Google. A perfect place to start would be YouTube and look at many videos on the topic of narcissism. They multiplied rapidly after Trump became president.
From a writer’s perspective, it is the troubles caused by a narcissist that are interesting and worth writing about. We have all run crossed narcissists. If you try to tell a narcissist their thinking is not correct, they are likely to say, “You are just stupid for thinking that.” Depending on the situation, they might also say things like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about” or “You’re crazy; no one thinks like that,” and so on. After a short time with the narcissist, you will begin to doubt yourself. It’s one of the reasons for the large turnover in the president’s staff.
The effect narcissism has on a person with that disorder is tremendous. Our president thinks there was no way he could have lost the presidential election. He will attribute all sorts of fictions to explain why he didn’t lose it. I started with the events of this week. Our president is very intelligent. He graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. It is one of the premier business schools in the United States. That high-level of intelligence allows him to come up with all sorts of reasons that he didn’t lose the presidential election. The trouble comes when people don’t see him as a narcissist. Many will buy into his assertions. We really can’t fault them. In a sense, we really can’t fault the narcissist either. However, the trouble is still there, and somehow we must deal with it. That’s where we are today – that’s one writer’s strange perspective.
