Trump’s giving away Israel’s game

No more pretences for Israel. A genocide it is.

(If you have received this by email, please click on the title to read the latest version. I often correct typos and continue to edit my essays, after publishing the first version).

Photo by Edilson Borges on Unsplash There is no real person behind the mask of a narcissist. There is no one there.

Owen Jones is right to be angry that our media are normalising ethnic cleansing, and annexation of territories — both in blatant violation of International Law. Jones says:

Donald Trump, the President of the United States, has committed his country - the world’s only superpower - to commit an abominable crime.

He has committed the US to illegally occupy and annex Gaza and ethnically cleanse its entire population. This is a grave and indisputable crime.

The bare minimum right now is to just state the facts. That what Donald Trump has proposed is ethnic cleansing, a fact, that’s number one; and that this is an objective violation of international law, that’s number two.

Well we have seen how our journalists, media outlets and politicians have failed, disastrously failed, and how they are helped to normalise and indeed facilitate genocide.

It is tempting to feel despair. The crazy criminals are in charge, and they seem to be doing whatever they want. They are treating people like objects, and are making a mockery of International Law and democratic institutions. But I wouldn’t read too much into what Trump says.

Traditional geo-political analysis is not enough to understand what is going on in the world right now. Given the personalities in charge, I believe people could benefit from a crash course in the psychology of personality disorders, and in Trump’s case, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

I have written about NPD in my article from last November, ‘Putting narcissists in charge is a very foolish thing to do’. In that article I shared the clinical definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) from the current edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). I would like to share it again here for the benefit of those who might have missed that article.

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According to the DSM-V¹ to diagnose a person with narcissistic personality disorder, they need to have five out of nine listed traits (DSM V. Narcissistic Personality Disorder — Diagnostic Criteria 301.81 (F60.81). pp 669-670).

Narcissistic personality disorder is a “A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (eg., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal

   love.

3. Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).

4. Requires excessive admiration.

5. Has a sense of entitlement (I.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).

6. Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends).

7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.”

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The reason you can start seeing this in early adulthood is because by about fifteen to seventeen, most people should begin to demonstrate executive prefrontal functions such as empathy, self-awareness, perspective, self-regulation, personal ethics, and the ability to recognise that the world does not revolve around them without having to be told.

The (middle) prefrontal cortex (PFC) traits, “… involve a set of nine … functions that include regulating our bodies, attuning to others, having emotional balance, calming fear, pausing before acting, having insight and empathy, being moral in our thinking and our actions, and having more access to intuition.” —-—Siegel D. (2010). The Mindful Therapist. Norton. p.31.

Before our prefrontal functions become reliable, we can all be a bit self-centred, inconsiderate, poorly regulated, reactive, and lack a broader perspective. You cannot diagnose a narcissist (or any personality disorder) based on a one-off act or behaviour. Anyone can have a bad day where their limbic system runs away with them and shuts down the adult in the brain. To qualify as a personality disorder the traits listed in the diagnostic criteria must be consistent across situations, and form a recurring and persistent pattern.

Narcissists are predators, whose ‘food’, or sustenance (‘narcissistic supply’) is admiration. The gaping hole in their psyche can never be filled, which makes them voracious, insatiable feeders. Real narcissists hunt all the way to their last breath, and they die hungry. The more ‘narcissistic supply’—admiration—they get, the more paranoid they become that someone might ‘steal’ it from them, or that the supply would run out.

Narcissists see people as either ‘suppliers’ or ‘non-suppliers’. Suppliers are useful while they provide constant admiration and attention. Non-suppliers are either uninteresting, useless and boring, or enemies. Think of a starving predator you refuse to feed. Narcissists feel their very survival depends on admiration. If you withhold their supply or block access to it, you are an enemy that threatens their very existence. That is why they can become so vicious and vindictive towards perceived enemies. They lack any capacity to see anything wrong with this behaviour. To them, this is ‘normal’.

Everyone around a narcissist knows they must be a reliable supplier to survive. Narcissists are fixated on loyalty, which is measured by whether people give them what they want. Sycophants feed off the favours that narcissists distribute, but their position is precarious—it takes little to trigger a narcissist’s paranoia. While narcissists can be spectacularly generous to loyal suppliers, these acts are not benevolent, and are not motivated by altruism. They come with strings attached, and they are intended to generate more admiration for the narcissist’s generosity, wealth, or power.

While not self-aware, Trump is nevertheless cunning. He knows what to say to get the admiration he covets from the person who happens to be right in front of him in the moment. It doesn’t work with everyone, but it works with enough people to motivate and encourage the narcissist. I once watched a narcissist in action at a social event. When standing with one group of people, the person expressed a political view that he expected would gain him the group’s admiration. A few minutes later, I witnessed the same person say the exact opposite to a different group. One of the things I tell my clients is that nothing that comes out of the mouth of a person with a PD has any value. The only purpose of what they say in any given moment is to secure their ‘supply’.

I have twenty-five years experience working with clients who have been affected by someone with a personality disorder (PD). I currently run a closed support group for people affected by someone with a PD in various contexts—the workplace, friendships, business relationships, intimate relationships, or family. People who have been affected by someone with a PD usually come to therapy feeling deeply confused. My clients are healthy, sane people with fully functional brains. Many people with healthy brains can find it hard to understand how a brain that lacks a functional PFC works. How is it possible for someone to be completely devoid of empathy and self-awareness? It is possible when the part of the brain that gives us these abilities is not properly developed.

In relationships with healthy people, we create shared memories of our interactions. We value the context of our relationships and over time it can deepen and become richer. We remember what the other person said in previous conversations, what we were doing at the time, how we felt when they said it, what we thought about it, and how we responded. If someone said something to us in a conversation, we can rely on that information next time we meet them. But this does not happen with people who have a PD. They live from moment to moment, and there is no history or continuity in the relationship. They genuinely have no memory of previous interactions, and they are unable to value the shared context. You get no credit for what you have been investing in the relationship. You are only as ‘good’, or as valuable to a narcissist as your immediate level of admiration.

Victims of people with PDs rightly talk about being ‘gaslighted’. Gaslighting is making someone doubt their memory or reality. If you had a conversation with someone with a PD last week about something that was important to you, there is a good chance they would deny what they said, or that the conversation ever happened. In my profession we call this ‘crazy-making’. Suppose you were on the receiving end of a tantrum or a tirade of abuse from the person with the PD. You would probably still be reeling from it hours, maybe days later, but the person with the PD moves on almost immediately and behaves as if nothing happened. If you bring up the subject to let them know how they affected you, to try to repair the harm done to the relationship by the tantrum, they are likely to respond with more abuse, or sometimes with a victim act. People with PDs are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions, because their PFC is not working properly.

All of us have had innocent experiences where we simply didn’t remember something. Memory is strongly affected by feelings. When we are angry or scared it is possible to forget what we or someone else said, or even have a distorted memory of the interaction. I witness this in my relationship therapy work regularly. In healthy relationships where both partners have a functional PFC, things can be sorted out. All it takes is for the two people to listen to one another, put themselves in the other person’s shoes (reverse roles), and validate each other’s feelings. This is impossible to do when a partner in a relationship has a PD.

Without empathy, self-awareness and a shared history, it is impossible to sort anything out in a relationship. The relationship can never grow or develop. I regularly remind my clients that in a relationship with someone with a PD, there is only one person in the relationship, and there can never be equality or symmetry. To the person with the PD other people, including children, are just a resource. This is why it is best to stay away, if possible.

When I read what Trump said about removing Gaza’s citizens, I knew he said it because Netanyahu was there. In that moment when they were together, Trump coveted Netanyahu’s admiration. The real message behind Trump’s statements is something like: “See, Netanyahu? I can give you the thing you want the most because I’m so amazing, and powerful”.

I put very little stock in what Trump says. What you can expect from him is a great deal of confusion caused by the simple fact that what he says is never about the substance of the message. If you focus on the substance, he can appear inconsistent. But if you remember that what Trump says is only a tool to secure admiration in the moment from a particular person or a crowd, the confusion disappears. Trump’s insatiable and pathological need for attention and admiration is the unifying principle behind everything he says and does. So to be absolutely clear, the US now has a President who is in the job only to meet his own need for admiration, and nothing else.

Far-reaching statements that have no real substance typically lead to confusion and chaos. Indeed, the US is rapidly descending into chaos under Trump. We have to be careful to not allow this to infect our own societies.

In primary school we learned an ancient Aramaic phrase: “Istra balagina, kish kish karya”—one coin in an empty jar makes a lot of noise. It is a reminder that a hollow person can often talk a lot and make a lot of fuss but with little substance. The best thing the media can do is ignore Trump completely; starve him of the attention he craves. Confronting him will achieve nothing, because he is not capable of reflection or empathy. He is a mindless, reactive predator. He will perceive any reporter who challenges and refuses to admire him as ‘not very nice’, or as hostile, even abusive.

We have seen Trump’s performance at press conferences during his previous presidency. Reporters were excluded from White House press briefings simply for asking substantive questions about policy. Trump is the latest in a long list of narcissistic despots that humanity keeps giving power to, and who leave nothing but chaos and scorched earth in their wake.

As I explained in my previous article, Israel plans to empty all of historic Palestine of its non-Jewish indigenous people, and replace them with what Israel calls Jews. This plan is in full force. Trump told Netanyahu what he wanted to hear; that he will make the completion of Israel’s settler-colonial project possible. But if I were Netanyahu, I would wipe the smugness off my face. Nothing Trump says has any value, and I doubt that Trump would keep his promises. Even if he did, both Israel and Trump will find that eliminating millions of people is an impossible task. However, unwittingly, Trump is providing an invaluable service to the world by removing Israel’s veil of deceit, and by exposing Israel’s crimes. Trump is helping Israel shoot itself in the foot.

This does not mean we can be complacent. Israel thinks it needs the US to push millions of Palestinians into Egypt or Jordan. Israel has also been finding that it is not so easy to murder millions of people and that it is not likely to achieve its goal of removing all the Palestinians from historic Palestine. But delusional Israel does have a ‘plan B’, and it is ready to go it alone without the US, or anyone’s help. The Palestinians can be pushed into the no-man’s land Israel has been creating in part of Syria and Lebanon. Creating this empty space for the Palestinians to be dumped in has been the real purpose behind Israel’s incursions into Syria and Lebanon. Israel will, of course, find that this too is not possible to achieve.

But even if Israel fails to eliminate millions of people, it enjoys inflicting suffering on the Palestinians, and will continue to do so until someone stops it. An unsuccessful, hungry, dissatisfied predator is still capable of inflicting harm, and may even be more dangerous than a successful one.

(Here’s a thought that a reader suggested in a comment. Perhaps the next person talking to Trump should offer him admiration for being the saviour of the Palestinian people. It might work…)

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