On Elon Musk’s X platform, all Xpression may as well be flushed down the digital river of tweeted communications: the appearance is brief and the flood mighty.
Countermeasure: copy-paste and blog the message as well.
Vladimir Putin using Viktor Yanukovych as his lackey had sorely abused Ukrainian business with time-honored mafia methods, i.e., plain skimming theft in the end:
#Putin & #RussianNazis #RusNazis spread chaos, degradation, deprivation, and desperation worldwide, and then cover their crimes with lies, specifically baseless accusations, deflections, denials, erasures of collective memory, fabrications, and omissions of facts.
#TrumpPutin’s shared basic psychology: Malignant Narcissism and Process. The lies told by both represent the “Covering” of deeply seated humiliation (“Narcissistic Mortification”) and the fear of its repeat. The psyche creates an alternative undamaged courageous-heroic self, and that becomes the leader’s principle project both in its assertion and its defense (in the psychology, “Splitting” or, together, “Covering/Splitting”). Complementary observation, term, or trope: “delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries or limits, i.e., the parameters of conscience” (so I quote myself). The end of the process for the Russian dictator and the American wanna-be dictator: “Unlimited Narcissistic Supply”, i.e., the validating infinite love of millions without end in sight.
Later that same month, the subcommittee held a hearing aimed at promoting Missouri v. Biden, the lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana that challenged the Biden administration’s efforts to work with social media companies to control disinformation.
“The executive branch has undertaken a broad campaign to censor the American people,” Johnson declared. “That’s the headline. That’s the takeaway today.”
While the Biden Administration’s program focused on integrity in the interest of the American People, Johnson and Republican attorneys general chose to hamper the effort in their own partisan interest, an interest that belies a lust for power unbridled by any interest in the bedrock that is truth x context x empirical observation x careful handling, sifting, and weighing of factual data x reasoning with good character and good sense — all of that to fool what they may presume to be their own sheep.
Call the sort of lie Speaker Mike Johnson uttered disingenuous speech or sophistry. Our “executive branch” encouraged honesty and integrity, but Johnson took it as a moment to call it censorship and thereby safeguard disinformation, chicanery, and fraud, which may to Johnson may rank among Christianity’s most fundamental and necessary virtues for they are not so useful to any sustained secular democratic republic.
Not all politicians lie so brazenly to their constituencies–and for the privileges of power itself, no less. Today’s Grand Old Party has stained itself with its abandonment of the Constitution, honor worth the recognition, and general integrity. Speaker Mike Johnson has only led the cowardly and seditious charge and been booted into place potentially to fully subvert the 2024 election.
How to Lie Like A Speaker (Representing the Devil)
For those daring to cross over to the forever burnt side of history, here is a smorgasbord of methods known to delusional or practiced liars: baseless accusations; defamations; deflections of responsibility; denials of culpability; erasures, omissions, and revisions in the telling of events; fabrications and frame-ups; fishing expeditions; libels and slanders.
For criminals, there are more potent forms of foul speech in the abuse of the law: conspiracy to commit crime and incitement to violence are two. Speech intended to defraud is another. Trump himself appears to own a special collection of tools with his finesse in vocalized or otherwise signaled coercion and intimidation–or marching orders. He has, after all, developed a reputation as a highly motivational speaker.
At the moment, the House has embarked on a programmatic impeachment of the incumbent President Biden and has done so without a single affirmed assertion or charge.
The US House of Representatives has voted to formally open an impeachment inquiry into president Joe Biden, moving forward a process that has been promised by Republican leaders since they regained control of the lower chamber in midterm elections in 2022. / Although no evidence has been produced, Republicans have accused Biden and his family of personally profiting from his position while vice-president under Barack Obama.
Licensed psychologists and psychiatrists and member of the American Psychiatric Association have the “Goldwater Rule”, which guidance disallows or discourages the making of claims about political figures without having had direct evaluative experience with the same. I concur. For the practicing psychologist or psychiatrist, the work of arriving at a clinical evaluation needs be direct and personal as well as versed in both the clinical DSM and perhaps a full history of despots and dictators. For cognizant citizens and political analysts, editors, and journalists, background helps as well may ample knowledge derived from consistent study over time and here, in particular, a good look at narcissism.
Immediately related on BackChannels: “Anthropolitical Psychology” -> “Malignant Narcissism” (of chief interest here). In the ways of desk analysts, my way, and the web, reference leads to reference until curiosity has been cured by repeated encounters with certain ideas, principles, and themes.
Malignant Narcissists Trump and Putin AKA Trump-Putin AKA #TrumpPutin
For the authoritarian and totalitarian malignant narcissist and sociopath with enough money and power, everything paid off (or silenced) works out in the end.
For essence regarding the process that turned two weaklings into courageous and heroic-looking figures popular with millions of voters suitably bought, leveraged seduced, snowed, or threatened in their respective nation-states: “Malignant Narcissistic Process Distilled” (BackChannels, July 10, 2022).
Political Criminals and Brothers in Loot
Given defenestrations, Navalny, Novichok,Polonium Tea, and Ukraine, Putin’s an easy tag as the boss of a state he has insisted on sustaining as a criminal enterprise, a “Russian Mafia State“, and a scourge to common humanity and good leadership worldwide. Russia, in large measure, appears neglected by the thug and his cohort except for the elimination of critics, journalists, and rivals in every manner possible.
Felonious Trump with his four felony cases racking up 91 counts for his American grand jury approved indictments should smell ferociously bad to his inveigled, hypnotized, or in-on-the-joke base, but it’s there with piety sincerely or piety as a cover for crime, or without piety but with extraordinary anger, delusion, frustration, hate, and political impotence, a crowd already royally screwed by Trump but perhaps ready for more cognizant, forthright, honest, and thoughtful American politicians.
That Hell Sinking Moment: Trump and Putin Together, Helsinki, July 16, 2018.
The famous video and the infamous answer to an American journalist’s question should today look and sound more chilling and conspiratorial than perhaps was the case almost four years ago. Russia’s Internet Research Agency troll farm had been an issue; spying by Maria Butina had surfaced in 2018. While the American reality-defying Republican Party may brag ascendance, one may with cause suspect it’s actually on the back foot while Americans who bought into the Trump fantasy come up to speed on the devils.
January 6, 2021: Insurrection–Armed, Planned, Executed with Violence
“They were peaceful people. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable. Did I mention the world “love”? The love in the air. I’ve never seen anything like it”– Donald John Trump, January 21, 2021.
Remember the characteristics of the malignant narcissist: “delusional, grandiose, messianic in ideation and well apart from normal as regards boundaries and limits, which may be considered a part of the parameters of conscience.” The men seen in the video are those conned, lied to, manipulated by the kind of men who blow up apartment buildings and point to themselves as the ones who can fix the situation while actually creating the false-flag situation; on the Trump side, the kind of men who in desperation for money would sell out their democracy for insurance against their own personal calamity. Both: close to crime . . . but that has made me wonder how far our United States of America has fallen in relation to dependence on its black markets, dark money, and deals itself with what used to be called “The Devil”. Today, the devils are just those sufficiently armored against conscience and ruthless enough to do anything for a buck and the witless adoration and validation of The People.
Perhaps a little bit to be less blunt or hurtful in the criticism or solicited response to another’s cooking, demeanor, fashion, or life.
Perhaps now and then for hooky, nooky, and bong–that’s not so good but fair in a mood or pinch.
Perhaps a convenient compliment for a kiss.
Perhaps to spare another pain or worry in souring conditions, so one is thought just fine when things are dicey.
To hide something (not so big a deal); to get something (and make life a little more sweet).
It takes another kind of nut to snowball a whopper, to put one over on a community, to seduce, fuck over, and ruin an associate, family, institution, or state–but that’s what malignant narcissists wind up doing in the process of covering the memory of their own humiliation or mortification with a great projection of an undamaged and unassailable heroic self, courageous in adversity, heroic before all, and totally full of bullshit.
The type I have in mind: delusional, grandiose, messianic and in appearance absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of conscience. In the cause of their own baseless glory, one may wade into their swamps of baseless accusations, defamations, deflections, denials, fabrications, frames, omissions, and revisions (some of them alibis). And downstream to be found in their targets: baseless belief, confusion, and eventual disappointment as the “reality” painted turns out having had nothing to do with reality at all.
Infamous Lies
Chechen Rebels Destroyed Apartment Buildings in Moscow
More likely, Russia’s secret political police, FSB, loaded basements with explosives in the dead of night, set off the detonations, and “credited” an allegedly unruly Chechnya resistance for the act in order to convince Russians to elect Vladimir Putin as their best problem solver and hope for security and stability. Code name: “Storm in Moscow”; on this blog: “Reference: Journalist Alexander Zhilin, Operation Storm in Moscow AKA Moscow Apartment Bombings” (May 3, 2023). And the payoff for the False Flag Operation? Not only election to power–and today absolute and imperious power–for Putin, but in his head and for his twisted spirit “Unlimited Narcissistic Supply”, i.e., the adoration and validation of the Russian People without end.
Democrats Stole the 2020 American Election
The United States of America has for its defense against all enemies foreign and domestic the services of 27 integrated Federal security agencies. For election, the nation enjoys a full suite of relevant threat detection and law enforcement capabilities from Homeland Security on down to security assistance for local districts. Against all of that, Donald Trump has launched the lie, rumor, belief, and “alternative truth”–which is no truth at all!–that his opposition (how dare they…) stole the 2020 national election. “Election Denialism” appears to have become for some–including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson–their faith-based religious obligation, but no factual basis for it has surfaced, and without that, Trump’s efforts to overturn the previous election amount to no more than the most delusional and grandiose attempted theft imaginable.
A Note On Stealing A Modern Or Transitional State to Operate as Criminal Enterprise
Putin and the Russian Mafia State appear to have set a certain tone in the region of archaic-reactionary and brutally repressive kleptocracy, and my guess is Trump is trying to catch up. Well, this is for America’s Christians to know as regards how criminal power exploits faith and related institutions: “KGB FSB ROC M-O-N-E-Y” (January 18, 2021).
From gutter to mansion, America supports an extraordinary duality in relation to sinners and saints, and, quite frequently, the would-be saints turn out the most curious of sinners. The famous are known: Jerry and Becki Falwell and the Pool Boy, Giancarlo Granda (People, Jan. 25, 2022)–and noted Becki in relation to the couple’s role at Liberty University, “We had to put on an act” ; Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye (maiden name LeValley) who together in marriage stumbled over the husband’s one seemingly acknowledged affair–one allegedly forced with Jessica Hahn, who was paid off for her silence–and allegations involving several homosexual flirtations or liaisons (The Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1988). The less famous but in their own wild way as infamous, whether charmingly so (old rascal) or heinous (for having committed a crime), we may be collectively just not all that angelic. Penance, piety, prayer, and promise afterward may suffice for easing conscience and erasing guilt, and sometimes penance precedes change, present and future, for the better. In any case, I wonder if all Americans, and regardless of religious subscription, may not expect some level of pious hypocrisy in themselves, if honest, or in their ranks (if that’s more comfortable) while striving to do better, but to cover repetitive criminal intent or behavior with the appearance of piety, that is something else.
One may not refer to either Donald John Trump or Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin as ethically or morally good men. As the governors of nation-states, neither has offered much evidence of care, concern, or interest for the whole body and spirit of their respective nations–Russians suffer sustained abuse and neglect if beyond Putin’s near direct circles of influence and power; for ordinary Americans, Trump has bragged to his wealthy friends from his own gilded halls at Mar-a-Lago, “You All Just Got a Lot Richer” (Vanity Fair, Dec. 24, 2017) after signing into law substantial tax breaks for them. Having ceded substantial tax revenues to private sector interests–and the public be damned (which it literally might be if such power prevails)–why should the buccaneer not commandeer the entire ship of state for his own crony capitalist private enterprise–just as Vladimir has done? He has already developed a base ripe for ripping off.
Marching Forward Into the Past
Around the world, constituencies will find leaders who prefer to treat the idea of the state as a private and family enterprise to be milked for their own profit and the securing of their family and their associates. They’re motivated by greed and lust and–given their underlying fear of humiliation and consequent delusional self-concept and obsession with their own aggrandizement–the allure of their own potential to control others without question. Centuries ago, that characterization would have fit well with a medieval world more than familiar with the concept of “Absolutism” or “Absolute Power” and its violent and not infrequently tyrannical enforcement. Today, the same personalities and personal psychology–associate what I have in mind with Erdogan, Orban, Putin, and Trump–appear archaic but difficult to address and ameliorate from the perspective of any democratic idealism, especially from the vantage of the still revolutionary Constitution of the United States of America (related in the way of inspiration for revolution and the idea of a new nation–Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, January 10, 1776). The named would be quite comfortable beneath the titles of Sultan Erdogan, Tsar Putin, King Orban, and, perhaps, King Trump.
Marching Forward Into The Future: A New American Community
Now that we’re all here, we’re going to have to deal with ourselves as a whole community and not so much as myopic and parochial islands fit for some Americans and not for others.
All American citizens are Americans.
Our guests are of two kinds: aspiring Americans or foreigners who have come here for business or travel.
As Americans, our challenges are not only American but by way of our own far expanded global awareness–apprehension or “consciousness”, actually–we have made ourselves global and universal in character. So have others, and with transnational business (and crime) all of the next functional steps have already been taken. Basically, our connections have changed and become enjoyable, essential, and permanent–or if adverse or made cautious by our own dependence, then a part of the challenge of an evolving new world.
Also as Americans, we have lived by a deeply devoted and earnestly defended Constitution designed to establish and sustain forever a secular democratic republic. Our western civilizational heritage–Judeo-Christian well acknowledged; Greco-Roman for the history, legends, and myths still echoing our own existence–has arrived here compassionate, down to earth, and reasoning. The wealth of the world has been brought here a long time, and as there is only one world, one Earth, we’re already blended with it and perhaps ready to adjust and assimilate, discard what’s not going to work, and appreciate that which proves good universally. We’ve been doing that a long time too, but for international relations, more may be involved than wearing cashmere and sipping tea.
We may see more than we once did; we may do more than we once could; and we should look ahead and do more than live in the past–or allow the greatest future ever to be stolen from all by evildoing feudal-medieval nutcases, whether religious extremists or criminal politicians who cannot contain their own worst compulsions.
So this much I may suggest about the next New World that is the one in which we are already living: it just hasn’t room for malignantly narcissistic “leaders” and their self-absorbed devotion to their own aggrandizement, enrichment, and power through fraudulent display and theft outright. The Next New World will need knowledgeable, powerful, and visionary high-integrity souls for its leadership in the development, establishment, and distribution of extraordinary systems for agriculture, business, education, health, justice, and general prosperity and security worldwide.
Putin may believe himself the personification of Russia, i.e., that Putin is Russia, but Putin is not Russia, and the cognizant and educated among Russians know it and know furthermore the Kremlin feeds Russia’s public–“The Masses” given Putin’s weird Imperialist-Stalinist revanche–garbage.
Given the dangers, including nuclear blackmail as evidenced by the mining of the Zaporizhzha Nuclear Power Plant, the possession of so-called “tactical nukes”, and the inveigling of Belarus in nuclear threat ambition, Putin may be expected to fail from within.
This morning, I posted two notes to European and global security expert Nicolas Tenzer’s Twitter feed–>
“My hope is you’ll see that Ukraine makes significant progress on their offensive and that it generates a negotiated settlement". Highly misleading words from @POTUS.#Russia must be fully defeated. There cannot be "pease talks" with #Russia. Period.https://t.co/ryZZO9lEts
I may have shared this with you already but it's appropriate here-https://t.co/Er9BwQ6Psl Putin's power resides in slavish obedience, not esteem; while he's made clear the price of disobedient intent, he may not have the internal support he believes he has and may yet be refused.
Putin's ascent to power, Moscow Apartment Bombings & all, may have been predicated on the discomforts of disaffected KGB at the end of the Cold War. Those weren't going to be left out of power & muscled back.
What is a feudal tyrant doing as the head of a still powerful and promising Russia?
Part of the answer involves a cosmic “Why not?”
As a gang, disaffected KGB–out of power, out of work in suddenly post-Communist Moscow–may have had a thick-as-thieves coordination and ruthlessness fit to their former secret policing mission and experience. Then too, they would have garnered the cooperation and interest of the post-Cold War peaceful of a productive Europe and North America.
“Why not?” for that as well.
Add condemnation, disapproval, and strong “red line” talk–TALK!–for aggression or barbaric actions undertaken on behalf of absolute power from Chechnya to Afghanistan to Ukraine and the United States (remember the Internet Research Agency!)–all squawk on the part of The West while all remained barbaric and criminal on the part of Moscow and its favored circles of disreputable mediocrities.
Left to grow Russia in his own mafia, mercenary, parochial, post-Soviet, rapacious, and ruthless manner, Putin put Russia’s army and his own demented narcissistic will on the big step into Europe, first Crimea in 2014 in response to the big “Nyet!” and boot given his lackey Viktor Yanukovych, and then the greater portion of the Breadbasket of Europe herself in February 2022.
Have Russians the will or wish themselves to be made criminal, desperate, dumb, and enslaved?
Have the less evident “forces of order” the intent and will to embrace and support those ends?
Perhaps Putin has finally gotten a certain attention secretly craved.
For the narcissist, there is a dark mirror in language. He looks at his reflection in the pond, sees the sky behind him, and he believes he is gazing up toward heaven-and he goes on living in his own reflection.#MalignantNarcissists#PoliticalCriminals#MaligNarcs#PolitCrims
More may be involved than being merely vain or having some egotism in need of some judicious but also liberating trimming: most of us–all of us–wish most of all to be what we call “ourselves” at our best, and each according to his own best assessment of abilities–and if we become too full of ourselves (offstage), we may encounter reminders, including from our own self-observing selves, that we are not all that.
Let us sit and sip more quietly.
On the other hand, the clinically (NPD) and politically (malignantly) narcissistic have a tougher self-assignment, and that is to 1) hide the damage done to them when they were helpless or incapable of their own effective defense and 2) cover it with an undamaged and much more competent and greater courageous-heroic image that would be and which becomes their own New Person–The Greatest.
The greater achievement for The Greatest: validation confirmed by love, but a capital-V “Validation!” confirmed by the Applause and Roar of the Crowd–High-Powered VALIDATION!, Limitless and MIGHTY!
We have all the right to transform from children into pretty good adults, but The Greatest want a greatness beyond the boundaries of the good.
Terms one encounters for the malign: delusional, grandiose, messianic.
In casual description: beyond limits; without boundaries.
Eventually: criminal.
“Those who conceived this war want only one thing — to remain in power forever, live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian Navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity,” Mr. Bondarev said in his email. “To achieve that they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes.”
In the dark mirror of language, the most primary lie in service to the speaker’s image may be the inverted accusation–on this blog, the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”. The narcissist is always beautiful, good, and right, and the targets unfailingly bent and ugly even though by every objective measurement and view, the narcissist is the evil.
The Greatest must be the greatest as well–not merely pretty good or, son of a gun, lucky!
Image matters and the means to produce it may be obfuscated and covered over, and in the dark mirror, the lies–the lying–really takes off. Putin, poker faced, insists that Russia attacks only military targets.
The Greatest lie to aggrandize and enrich themselves, their cronies, families, and networks; to confuse the judgments of others; to perceptually control their fans, marks, and targets–and they lie most of all to hide their crimes.
If only it existed in the Mainstream Press (Fox News excepted at present).
Fake Presidents?
At least two exist and both have represented rival superpowers.
One has been putting on a clown show in the United States.
One remains in power in Russia.
Meanwhile others in Moscow are still wondering whether there is a domestic political aspect to the crisis and whether rogue elements of the security forces are in some way involved in an attempt to provoke a state of emergency in Russia or the cancellation of elections.
There is absolutely no proof of this, but a little noticed article in the Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda by a respectable journalist Alexander Zhilin is now attracting attention.
Zhilin wrote on 25 August that President Yeltsin’s health was failing and that a plan with the codename “Storm in Moscow” was being hatched in the Kremlin . . . .
Zhilin’s article is interesting because it was written before the bomb explosions.
During this fateful summer when Moscow was awash with rumors, I was friendly with a Russian political operative who was well connected to the higher levels of Russian power. When I met him, he told me about the growing fear in the Kremlin about the possibility of losing power and the indications that Moscow would be the scene of a huge provocation. He said that the issue was the security of Yeltsin and his family in the case of a handover of power. He said that if there was no agreement on terms, “they will blow up half of Moscow.”
I sensed the uneasiness but did not know how to assess the prediction of my friend. I had no illusions about Yeltsin and his cronies but it was hard to imagine that a man who came to power as a result of a peaceful anti-communist revolution with massive public support would be willing to murder his own people to hold onto power. Developing events, however, were to change my mind.
At 9:40 p.m. on September 4, a truck bomb exploded in Buinaksk, Dagestan’s second-largest city. It destroyed a five story apartment building, which housed soldiers from the 136th Motor Rifle Brigade.
In a curious twist to the story, the liberal bi-weekly Novaya Gazeta published an investigation on Monday into a bomb discovered in the city of Ryazan last year. The FSB eventually said it had planted the bomb but that it was a fake and the incident was part of a training exercise. Local eyewitnesses said the timer and explosives were real.
I’ve ordered John B. Dunlop’s book The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule (Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2014) and expect to find some “lovely” devils in the details but no change in the thesis relayed by the above quotations: power in Moscow, Yeltsin’s or Putin’s–or as controlled by Russia’s secret political police, the FSB–has proven itself criminal, ruthless, and unconscionable by bombing apartment buildings in the dead of night while Russian families slept in peace, and they did it in the interests not of real power, but of a display of power, i.e., of their own narcissistic image as controlled in a theater of their own making.
The false-flag operation, “Storm in Moscow”, supported the election of Vladimir Putin (for the length of his life, apparently) and the launching of a barbaric war featuring most of all the brutalizing of Chechen villages, sending the men into the ranks of rebels and putting in control the warlord Ramzan Kadyrov.
The betrayal of ordinary Russian people: unfathomable.
And perhaps ordinary Russians should know the truth.
Cited or Related Online
About Operation “Storm in Moscow” AKA “Moscow Apartment Bombings”
Russian power appears to lie first and foremost to Russians while maintaining for itself the burden of truths about which it cannot and dare not speak–at least not until found out. Given the work of many journalists possess of abundant curiosity and integrity, Russia’s powerful have been today well observed, investigated, and reported on extensively, and for the top rank, the same would seem today fully found out.
A few brave individuals did try to investigate the Ryazan incident. When the State Duma, which was controlled by the regime, voted three times against opening an inquiry into the incident, an independent social commission was created that included several deputies, among them, Sergei Yushchenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, an investigative journalist with the independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Yushchenkov was shot dead outside his apartment building on April 17, 2003. Shchekochikhin was poisoned in July 2003. Litvinenko and Politkovskaya also investigated the bombings only to be killed. In the wake of these murders, a curtain of fear descended in Russia over the issue of how Putin came to power.
BackChannels 