The Cognitive Dissonance of Free Speech and Trump
The Cognitive Dissonance of Free Speech and Trump
Trump's Plan to Destroy the US Constitution and its First Amendment
As the United States approaches the third anniversary of January 6 this coming weekend, a sizable contingent of Republicans, Independents, and the politically heterodox castigate censoriousness and shout the loudest for the preservation of free speech while pulling out all the stops to shore up Trump as president again who would take this cherished freedom away from them when he destroys the Constitution. Thinking that one can maintain freedom of speech and have Trump as president is an example of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance can be defined as holding two oppositional, contradictory, and irreconcilable thoughts simultaneously.
America’s narcissistic populace thinks that they can have their cake and eat it too: all the best of Trump i.e., a “protective” Daddy figure, and not suffer any of the worst of it— like not being able to complain about his draconian, stultifying, and oppressive policies when he becomes dictator of the United States.
Predicated on a narcissistic age, the authoritarian walls are closing in on the United States whether it is through authoritarian woke ideology from the left or authoritarian Trump from the right. Limiting the scope of this piece to Trump, Americans narcissistically and delusionally believe that they will be able to speak just as freely (or more freely) under Trump, same as it ever was (or better). These Trump supporters may counterfactually reason that the checks and balances held steady during the first Trump term and that the second Trump term would be more or less a continuation of the same. What these entitled voters fail to appreciate is the dozen or so crucial figures, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Mike Pence who single-handedly saved US democracy from finding the 11,780 needed votes in Georgia to overturn Biden’s victory or refusing to discard electoral votes necessary for Trump’s preservation of power in 2020, respectively.
Many excuses are made for Trump, such as “He loves our country and will save us from authoritarian wokeism.” However, and here's the catch, narcissists, and yes, Trump is a psychopathic narcissist, (what used to be called a malignant narcissist), are incapable of love, by definition. Narcissists are self-cathected (emotionally invested), and as such, are incapable of object relations, that is to say seeing other people as separate and distinct with their own wishes, wants, and desires. Recall the image of the Greek god, Narcissus incessantly gazing at his reflection in the pool to the chagrin of his would-be lover Echo, who could not reach him. People are mere avatars to the narcissist, only internal objects—mental constructs, to be manipulated, abused, and summarily discarded. Narcissists have only negative affectivity; it is impossible for them to access positive emotionality such as love. What looks positive is Oscar-worthy.
Narcissism is totalitarian by definition. The narcissist is a dictator, even in the realm of his own family. It's a cult, and he's the cult leader. So when you render narcissism the organizing principle of your life and your civilization, you're bound to end up with totalitarianism and autocracy, not with democracy.
Prof. of Psychology, Sam Vaknin
A wide swath of Americans are pushing away reality, engaging in fantasy-based delusions that January 6 was not an insurrection; surely Daddy wouldn't attempt a coup?? Oh, but yes he would. And he did.
MAGA Republicans, paranoid conspiracists, and other reality-impaired voters assert that J6 was anything but an insurrection: it was “deep state” plants; it was a “riot”; it was a “security failure” (as if we shouldn't expect baseline civility in civilization); they “didn't have guns” so it wasn't an insurrection (despite gallows to hang VP Mike Pence and other abundant weaponry including firearms); they wanted to “Stop the Steal” but they weren't mounting a coup, therefore it wasn't an insurrection (the splitting hairs defense).
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an insurrection as an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government. Even with the most far gone, it's virtually unanimous that the Capital attack was about “Stop the Steal,” and as such should and does qualify as an insurrection. These seditious “rioters” were not peacefully protesting and came with violent intent to intercede in the election to throw it to Trump.
The pushback on the J6 mainstream narrative also comes in the form of postulating that the J6 hearings (Public hearings of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack) were political theater and that it’s irrelevant that testifying Republicans crossed party lines, predominating the hearings. Trump apologists and critics of the J6 hearings are dismissive of the Vice-Chair of the hearings, Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who were primaried/retired for their commendable faithfulness to the US Constitution over partisan fealty to party and Trump.
Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley amongst a majority of fellow Republicans decried the insurrection immediately following Jan. 6, until the Republican party came up with alternate narratives, i.e., “alternative facts” within a year's time.
Americans have been gaslighted and continue to self-gaslight. To believe these J6 fabrications, distortions, and outright lies is to entertain off-the-charts delusionality. And narcissism, with its confabulations (dissociatively piecing together plausible narratives built on sand), is adept at destabilizing one’s sense of truth. With a steady drip, drip, drip of destabilizing counterfactual narratives, one’s reality testing takes a toll and slips away. Psychopathology takes root in accordance with resulting delusionality. Thus, pathological narcissism is psychogenic/catching.
Of self-gaslighting, Professor of Psychology, Sam Vaknin has imparted:
The supporters of Donald Trump don't want to hear anything bad about Donald Trump. And when there is an avalanche of seriously bad things about Donald Trump, they reframe these things.
Every shortcoming becomes an advantage. Every misdeed becomes smart and clever conduct. Every disempathic, seriously wicked comment becomes irony and proof of a sense of humor in everything he does. Everything he says is reinterpreted, misinterpreted, recast, reframed, confabulated. The supporters of Donald Trump create narratives that shut out, shut off, delete and ignore any information or data which contradicts their already well-established theory.
These Washington Post/University of Maryland polls were aired on MSNBC's show Morning Joe on January 3, 2024:
Last month, Trump was cast off the 2024 ballot in Colorado as well as Maine over his role in J6; Trump’s viability as a presidential candidate now hangs in the balance. The State rulings will most likely be overturned by the Supreme Court, assuring his ability to run owing to a lack of political will (fear of Trump's radical, insurrectionist MAGA base), a politicized Supreme Court with three Trump appointees, and likely dirty dealings to do with the Trump campaign.
Already, the New York Times reported on January 2 on their podcast The Daily, about Trump’s backroom campaign's underhanded and aggressive tactics to change campaign rules in Nevada to wrap up Trump’s nomination in the state by securing the necessary delegates before any possible conviction would threaten to take his nomination away from him. Additionally, the Trump campaign has kneecapped DeSantis’ super PAC in Nevada, all but assuring Trump as the Nevada GOP nominee.
Maggie Haberman of The Daily reports, “California has made the biggest changes in any state to primary rules to favor Trump this cycle. Republicans there changed the formula for how delegates are allocated. In the past, there’s 52 congressional districts in the state and candidates could go to each one and if you won the district you would pick up delegates but the Trump campaign pushed for changes to those rules this year for a winner-takes-all system and now the GOP in California is going to give all 169 of its delegates to a candidate who meets the winner-takes-all threshold of over 50% state-wide.” No other candidate has the competitive edge to get over 50% of the delegates except Trump.
Contrary to the assertions by conspiracy theorists and other Trump enablers that the Colorado and Maine legal rulings undermine democracy by politicizing and weaponizing the courts and thereby destabilizing one of the three pillars of democracy, the judicial branch of government, it is the very act of disqualifying Trump from being on the Colorado and Maine primary ballots that buttresses democracy; this is what maintaining freedom looks like from a fascist dictator. Any other instigator of a violent, deadly, and psychopathic attack on the capital— call it what you will, a riot gone awry or insurrection— would be behind bars for life. That Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows had the political will to swim upstream against the tide is laudable for its integrity.
Author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder writes “In the scenario in which Trump wins, the fact that he was on the ballot will have already discredited the Supreme Court.” Snyder chalks up kowtowing to an enraged populace that Trump should be disqualified from the ballot, as capitulating and buckling under, writing, “Rejecting the legal order in favor of what seems to be politically safe at a given moment is just about the most dangerous move that can be made. It amounts to advocating that we shift from constitutional government to an insurrectionary regime. To advocate pitchfork rulings is to endorse regime change; to issue pitchfork rulings is to announce regime change.”
To advocate pitchfork rulings is to endorse regime change; to issue pitchfork rulings is to announce regime change.
Author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder
These rulings were not plucked out of thin air. Section Three of the 14th Amendment prohibits any political candidate having engaged in insurrection or rebellion from being eligible to hold office. The Colorado court held, “Trump aimed to incite political violence and rallied supporters toward the Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election results, violating the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) said Trump “used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters” on Jan. 6 and “was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”
Less than a week ago, the Colorado GOP appealed the state's ruling to the Supreme Court and the Colorado court put a stay on Trump’s disqualification. Trump will for the time being remain on the ballot, which goes to print on January 5, unless the Supreme Court affirms the lower court's ruling or otherwise declines to take on the appeal.
On January 3, the Trump campaign put out a statement claiming the Colorado ruling was an “unAmerican, unconstitutional act of election interference.” This accusation is rich considering it was Trump who pushed for election interference with fake electors schemes to overturn the election results which resulted in being indicted by the special counsel and it was Trump who was impeached for inciting insurrection when he didn't win the presidency.
It is not only the Trump campaign's comment on election interference, it is also Trump's claim that Biden is a threat to democracy that exemplifies Trump’s playbook of projection.
As for why a democratic country would toy with autocracy, people are most afraid of freedom (John Paul Sartre) and will self-sabotage especially the more narcissistic the population, as narcissism is self-defeating, self-destructive, and self-sabotaging.
Republican Newt Gingrich set the wheels in motion for a divisive US Government where the days of friendly across-the-aisle camaraderie was supplanted with narcissistic zero-sum acrimony. The Trump administration cemented a narcissistic ethos where politics became a mud-slinging sport replete with juvenile name-calling.
Not only is America and the West under threat from without, but America faces its own homegrown existential threat in Trump from within. In my interview with Prof. Sam Vaknin on December 20, he made note of the United States enemy-seeking, bellicose, pathological society:
America is always on the lookout for an external enemy, because this is the only engine of cohesion in a country that is made up of 187 ethnicities, four recognized races and so on. The United States is not a homogenous nation-state. It's an abstract concept. It's an idea, ratified somehow.
And the glue that holds everything together very often is an external enemy. So you demonize external enemies, you exaggerate their importance, and so on.
Trump is arguably the most divisive and polarizing president the United States has ever had the misfortune of having as its Commander-in-Chief. Countless friendships and families have been ripped asunder over this one man.
The chinks in one’s armor, the vulnerability of the American populace to narcissistic abuse spearheaded by Trump, involves a collective desire to regress to the womb, to be baby-like.
In my recent interview with narcissism expert, Sam Vaknin, he edifies the psychodynamics at play (edited):
Trump is triggering primitive infantile defense mechanisms. He triggers in people a fantasy defense, which provides them with a fantasy, or alternative reality, alternative facts, yeah? He triggers in them splitting: we are all good, everyone else is all bad, vermin, or whatever.
He regresses his base, psychologically speaking, to infancy. He infantilizes his base. It's a very alluring proposition. Everyone wants to be a baby again.
Everyone wants to have a second go at childhood, a second chance, a second childhood. Everyone wants to go back to the womb where it was safe and stable. And Trump is offering this. What is he saying in effect is, “You don't need to be responsible or accountable or make choices at all. I'm here. I'm a paternal figure. You can be children now. All your lives, you've had to be adults. You've had to work hard and you failed. As adults, you fail. You don't have a job, you're uneducated, you failed as adults. And here I'm giving you an opportunity to not be adults anymore, to be babies, my babies.
As babies, you can call everybody else bad, evil. As babies, you can live in fantasy. As babies, you can project. You're actually weak. You're failures, you're losers, but you can call everyone else weak and failure and loser.” So he legitimizes infantilization of his base. And that's an irresistible proposition.
People fear the most freedom. What people fear most is freedom, the need to choose. That’s not Sam Vaknin. It's Jean Paul Sartre. People are terrified. Kierkegaard. There's existentialists. They taught us that angst, the existential anxiety, is because we have to make choices all the time. We are responsible. We are accountable.
We have to pay the consequences for our actions and our decisions. We don't want to do that, it's terrifying, because we don't know if our choices and decisions are right. Maybe we're making the wrong choices, maybe our decisions are wrong, and then we will have to pay a horrible price.
It's tempting to not have to make decisions. Someone else will make the decisions for us, and then if he's wrong, he will pay the price. It's displacement of the cost of life. It's opting out of life, in a way, rejecting life, and saying, I'd rather be in a fantastic space, a paracosm. And so it's not possible to overcome, because in a world that is so terrible, fantasy is an appealing solution, an appealing alternative.
It will be very difficult to defeat Donald Trump. Donald Trump is not reality-based, he is fantasy-based, and fantasies are all-encompassing, comforting. It's a form of self-soothing.
Trump is having a love affair with his base, because a love affair is exactly this. Love is a pathology, a fantasy difference. How do you come between two lovers? If you try to talk to a lover and say, “Listen, the person you love is horrible. She's evil, she's ugly,” he will never listen to you.
What a tangled web we weave when we refuse to look ourselves in the mirror at our narcissistic complicity. A great number of people around the world have sounded the alarm on Trump, yet many Americans continue to be willing to bet the farm on him.
Snyder goes on to write, “We can have the Constitution, or we can have Trump.”
Believing that Trump is a good plan for America reveals delusional and disordered thinking. Trump Derangement Syndrome would be more aptly recast as Trump Delusional Syndrome.