There are all sorts of disagreements regarding people like Steve Jobs*, Newt Gingrich and Bill O’Reilly, but one thing most people are in agreement about is that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.
Why is that? It’s because there is a belief (correct or not) that if you do, they are capable of a rage (even if it doesn’t cross over into violence) that is chilling.
Other characteristic traits of such narcissists** (and this also applies to the female variety) include:
- Control freaks
- Irritability
- Short fuses
- Low frustration tolerance
- Argumentative
- Need to have the last word
- Unable to lose
- Won’t take “No” for an answer
- Quick to anger if you don’t accommodate them
- Quick to being aggressively defensive if you call them on any deficiency, fault or responsibility
- Can’t apologize or if do, can’t do it sincerely
- Rarely say, “Thank you” or “Congratulations”
- Don’t feel or demonstrate remorse
- Feel entitled to enthusiastic and appreciative approval, adoration, agreement and obedience
- Gloat in victory, sullen in defeat
- Quick to rage if you humiliate them
.. There is a saying that when you’re a hammer the world looks like a nail. When you’re a narcissist, the world looks like it should approve, adore, agree and obey you. Anything less than that feels like an assault and because of that a narcissist feels justified in raging back at it... What is really at the core of narcissists is an instability in their ability to feel and sustain feeling bigger, larger, smarter and more successful than everyone else which they need to feel stable... “the narcissist doth brag, scorn, talk down, primp and belittle too much” in order to continually prove to the world and themselves that they are larger than life. This is not to increase their self-esteem as much as it is to continually spackle the holes in their core that lead to a feeling of instability—and that, if not spackled, will lead to brittleness followed by fragmentation... Narcissistic rage occurs when that core instability is threatened and furthermore threatened to destabilize them even further. Not unlike a wounded animal being the most vicious (because they think the next wound would kill them), narcissistic rage occurs when narcissists believe the next insult/assault to their grandiose based stability would shatter them.
.. In essence the reason narcissists are so self-centered is that their grandiosity based center needs to be constantly reinforced to remain stable.
.. What to do when a narcissist rages at you?
Don’t let them cross over the line to physical violence, but if it looks like they will follow you to keep verbally assaulting you and then maybe escalate, just listen to them until they sputter out. Don’t try to engage them verbally.
.. After they calm down—or better, the next day—say to them: “I didn’t want to say this when you were yelling at or being sullen with at me, but going forward the next time you get so angry at me and verbally yell at me, speak contemptuously or act sullen, I will say once, ‘Please speak to me or act in a respectful manner,’ and if that doesn’t stop you, I will walk away and go to some other part of the house, office, or company.
Following that conversation, if it happens again, I will simply walk away saying, ‘I have other things to do.’ This is not an ultimatum, but just a heads up of what I will do if those exchanges happen again.”
One of the takeaways from this is that “words sometimes respond to words, but actions (which narcissistic rage is) respond to actions in the form of consequences.” The challenge is to make your action response just right and not go to overkill, which you will have to take back, or underkill, which will only allow them to keep raging at you.
Supreme Court justices are speaking up more because they’re not afraid to be partisan
Many other forms of judicial behavior also changed in the mid-1990s. Starting in 1995, the time that justices spent speaking during oral argument skyrocketed, leaving the advocates with far less of the 60-minute argument to make their cases.
.. The justices as a group have taken an additional 13 minutes of argument after 1995 than before, an increase of 22 percent.
.. What caused these trends?
.. Rather, behavior at the Supreme Court changed in response to a radical increase in political polarization.
.. The 1994 Republican Revolution, led by Rep. Newt Gingrich (Ga.), coincided with a rapid rise in polarization. Ideological distance between the two parties grew, and the number of moderates in Congress plummeted. Norms of bipartisan lawmaking began to erode, and eventually the Republican majority impeached a popular Democratic president.
.. During this period, the justices’ questions to litigants barely increased, but nonquestions — occasions when the justices made statements, rebutted their colleagues and presented arguments — rose precipitously. Since 1995, the justices have made comments almost three times as often as they have asked questions
.. Together, the justices have made more than 100 additional comments per case since 1995. Rather than inviting advocates to explain their positions, the justices are often making the cases themselves.
.. The link with polarization is clear: The justices now disproportionately disrupt the side that they ultimately rule against.
.. The justices generally direct their true questions to the side they support and their comments to the side they oppose. The difference, again, increased massively since 1995.
.. Justices also began more frequently to supply answers through leading questions and to step in with deflection and rebuttal. At oral argument in Dean v. United States last year, after Justice Sonia Sotomayor repeatedly came to the aid of a struggling advocate, he mistook Sotomayor for Justice Elena Kagan. “She’s Justice Sotomayor,” Kagan told him. “She was the one helping you.” It was an unusually frank recognition of what oral arguments have become: a chance for the justices to support their side over the other one.
The attacks on Mueller push us closer to the precipice
Our democratic republic is in far more danger than it was even a few weeks ago.
Until this point, there was an underlying faith in much of the political world that if Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian collusion in the election turned up unmistakably damning material about Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress would feel obligated by their commitment to the country’s well-being to accept Mueller’s findings and challenge the president.
.. we learned last week that Republicans are deepening their complicity in derailing Mueller’s investigation and burying the facts. The more Mueller imperils Trump, the more McCarthyite the GOP becomes.
.. The apotheosis of Republican congressional collusion with Trump’s efforts to hang on at all costs came at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. One Republican after another attacked Mueller and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as if the latter should be placed on a new compendium of subversive organizations.
.. Gohmert might as well have echoed the favored question of the congressional inquisitors of the early ’40s and ’50s: “Are they now or have they ever been . . . supporters of Hillary Clinton?”
Deserving an Academy Award for the most striking imitation of a member of the old House Un-American Activities Committee was Rep. Louie Gohmert. The hard-right Texas Republican went through a roll call of investigators, name by name, asking Wray if each had shown political bias. Wray defended every one of them he knew and wryly smiled when he was unfamiliar with one of the five names on Gohmert’s hit list.
.. When Republicans are FBI haters who are sidetracking probes into Russian subversion, the world truly is turned upside down.
.. Note also the statement of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that if every member of Mueller’s team who was “anti-Trump” were kicked off, “I don’t know if there’d be anyone left.” The implication is that even if Mueller’s investigation produced unassailable evidence of wrongdoing by Trump, we should ignore the truth, because Mueller’s team should have been vetted to exclude anyone who had a smidgen of doubt about the president.
.. Trump’s allies want us to say: Too bad the president lied or broke the law, or that Russia tried to tilt our election. This FBI guy sending anti-Trump texts is far more important, so let’s just forget the whole thing.
.. Only recently, it was widely assumed that if Trump fired Mueller, many Republicans would rise up to defend our institutions. Now, many in the party are laying the groundwork for justifying a coverup. This is a recipe for lawlessness.
.. Just last May, Newt Gingrich called him a “superb choice to be special counsel” and praised his “honesty and integrity.” Now, pro-Trump politicians feel free to contradict anything they said in the past and to dismiss what they once saw as legitimate authority if those who hold it threaten their power. This is a recipe for autocracy.
Trump himself told us plainly on Friday night in Pensacola, Fla., that he will do whatever it takes to hold power, and he should be taken seriously. “There are powerful forces in Washington trying to sabotage our movement,” he declared. “These are bad people, these are very, very bad and evil people. . . . But you know what, we’re stopping them. You’re seeing that right now.”
We are far closer to the edge than we want to think.
Dina Powell, deputy national security adviser, to depart Trump White House
National security adviser H.R. McMaster called Powell “one of the most talented and effective leaders with whom I have ever served.”
.. Powell, like her colleagues, faces the question of how much influence she ultimately had on the president and his approach to foreign policy.
.. Along with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and Jason Greenblatt, the special representative for international negotiations, Powell has been an architect of Trump’s Middle East policy.
.. Powell, also a former Goldman Sachs executive, was to many Trump supporters the antithesis of what the administration should support, given her close ties to Wall Street and support of a traditional Republican view of international affairs.
.. Powell has been lumped into what former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon dismissively calls the “globalists.”
.. One senior White House official described Powell’s relationship with President Trump as “really trusting” and said of his first year in office, “Without her, it would have been worse.”
.. She also worked on Capitol Hill as a House leadership staffer during the tenure of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)