The World Can’t Afford Trump: Narcissist-in-Chief

The world has many conflict hotspots, but a narcissist like Trump would make them about himself, rather than what's good for America…

Move over American Exceptionalism, and make way, if Trump attains the White House, for Trump Exceptionalism. Make no mistake, Trump’s presidential hopes are Trump hopes. Make America Great is Trump-speak for Make Trump Important. Because as the image says, Trump likes himself some himself.
In other words, the problem for America is that the Republican front runner is a textbook narcissist, at least according to psychologists. This is probably not a surprise even to laymen, but Vanity Fair asked some professionals to weigh in with their opinion (perhaps because Vanity Fair believes Trump could really be elected president) and what we’re hearing in response is “Textbook narcissistic personality disorder,” and “Remarkably narcissistic,” and “He’s so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example of his characteristics…he’s like a dream come true.”
Or a nightmare:

That mental-health professionals are even willing to talk about Trump in the first place may attest to their deep concern about a Trump presidency. As Dr. Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry and the director of the master’s of bioethics program at Columbia University, pointed out, the American Psychiatric Association declares it unethical for psychiatrists to comment on an individual’s mental state without examining him personally and having the patient’s consent to make such comments. This so-called Goldwater rule arose after the publication of a 1964 Fact magazine article in which psychiatrists were polled about Senator Barry Goldwater’s fitness to be president. Senator Goldwater brought a $2 million suit against the magazine and its publisher; the Supreme Court awarded him $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages.

Scary stuff. And think about what it would mean to America to have the Trump Cult of Personality in the White House. Look at all the hotspots around the globe.

For Trump, these would not be about American interests, what’s best for us and for our allies, but about being one of the winners.
There’s Iraq and Syria and Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, there is Iran and Russia and the Baltic States and Russia and the Ukraine and Russia in Syria and Russia and Turkey. As the International Institute for Strategic Studies tweeted,

IISS News @IISS_org

Russia has violated every major European security agreement from UN charter to 1990 charter of Paris: @IlvesToomas

Then there is the South China Sea with China versus just about everybody:

Map of hypothetical scenario of China-Japan Conflict, showing conflict zones (A); sea exclusion zones (B); and air restriction zones (C ). Military bases are represented by total population within 50km Cambridge Center for Risk Studies – See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/planning-for-war-a-guide-for-businesses#sthash.TrTU6xKH.dpuf

Don’t forget Korea, and Afghanistan, and India and Pakistan, tension over natural resources in the Arctic, not to mention African hotspots like Nigeria. The world is a mess. (a complete list of ongoing conflicts can be found here – as of November 26, “27 Countries and 191 between militias-guerrillas, separatist groups and anarchic groups involved”).
So yeah. We need a stable president to confront this mess, not a president who is a man who can’t handle facts at the expense of his own ego. The world is not black and white, either/or, or good vs. evil. Reality has nuance that escapes most Republicans, but Trump sees the world as defined by “winners” and “losers.” Huffington Post talked to Joseph Burgo, psychologist and author of The Narcissist You Know, who said,
“Narcissists like Trump… are constantly driven to prove themselves among the ‘winners’ of the world, often by triumphing over or denigrating other people as comparative ‘losers.’ If you examine Trump’s language in his public statements as well as in the debates, you will hear him proclaim his winner status again and again while sneering at his detractors as losers.”
Vanity Fair approached Licensed clinical social worker Wendy Terrie Behary, the author of Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed, and she said,
“Narcissists are not necessarily liars, but they are notoriously uncomfortable with the truth. The truth means the potential to feel ashamed. If all they have to show the world as a source of feeling acceptable is their success and performance, be it in business or sports or celebrity, then the risk of people seeing them fail or squander their success is so difficult to their self-esteem that they feel ashamed. We call it the narcissistic injury. They’re uncomfortable with their own limitations. It’s not that they’re cut out to lie, it’s just that they can’t handle what’s real.”
So imagine Trump in any of these scenarios mentioned above. He couldn’t confront a media lightweight like Kelly without losing it, or even that antithesis of a journalist Todd. But let’s assume for a moment that he could find his testicles long enough to face down Putin. It’s a recipe for disaster. We need common sense and a realistic appraisal of the situation and we’ll have instead two guys comparing the lengths of their “penii.”
Or look at Trump confronting China over its economic policy, which he has entirely wrong (perhaps an explanation for his four corporate bankruptcies) or over its military reach into the South China Sea against Vietnam, the Philippines, or even its ongoing taunting of a re-arming Japan. The United States has interests in this area. Is Trump going to turn this into another case of Trump has to win because Trump is a winner? Or is he going to engage in sober diplomacy? You tell me.
If psychologists are worried enough to speak up, we should heed their fears. We should all be worried. The world is no place for Donald Trump with a nuclear briefcase. The place for Trump is reality TV where he can ruin only a few lives at a time, the lives of people who have agreed to have their lives ruined by this narcissist. The entire world should not be at his mercy. It’s great the Republican establishment opposes him, but they created him and they’re opposing him for all the wrong reasons.
As Vanity Fair’s Henry Alford put it, “the need to protect or exalt the self is at odds with the job requirements of a president.” Obama understand this. Sure, presidents have a care for their legacy. But Obama understands his duty is to the nation and to the American people. Trump see’s his only duty as being to himself. And if he got into the White House, there is nowhere in this world any of us could hide from his fragile ego.

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It Is Time To Officially Label the Republican Cabal A Hate Group

The SPLC says hate groups "have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people,..for their immutable characteristics."…

Throughout the overly long and ridiculously drawn out two-year presidential campaign for the 2016 general election, the one defining universal trait among Republicans is their habit of spreading hate against Americans. Republicans know their base, and they are well aware that it is filled with low-intellect religious Americans who are generally well-armed and actively looking for someone, or some innocent group, to attack. It is true that Republicans are not calling on their supporters to kill other Americans in the media, but their use of vitriol and lies is accomplishing that goal all the same.
Stochastic terrorism is defined as using of mass communications to stir up random lone individuals to carry out desired violent terrorist acts that are statistically predictable, but individually unpredictable. Translation; Republicans know that with enough incitement, no small number of their supporters will commit an act of terror, they are just not sure who will do the killing. By now, only evangelical fanatics and Republicans are unaware that the reason America is now a structurally violent society is because evangelical fanatics and Republicans spend the majority of their time inciting “random lone individuals to carry out desired violent terrorist acts” against Americans. And as the past few years have demonstrated, they are always the Americans the Republican cabal and religio-wingnuts regard as “undesirables.”
Although Republicans, and all of their wingnut iterations, have always singled out one group or another as undesirables as the focus of their hate, since the election of Barack Obama they have greatly expanded their “undesirable” list. It is important to note that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), “official hate groups are those that have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
Using that definition, it is more than safe to say that the Republican cabal and its various cohorts are officially a hate group. And, instead of attacking one entire class of people, they have focused on every segment of the population save the very rich and the very religious, if the very religious are evangelical fanatics. It does not matter if it is the poor, women, the LGBT community, liberals, atheists, immigrants, Muslims, veterans, Hispanic or African Americans, Republicans have used the media to incite rage and hate against them all.
Republicans claim the source of the problem is secularism, liberals, President Obama, humanistic activists, women, immigrants and minorities who make themselves the target of hate and violence just by existing in “white 'christian' America.” Over the past few months, at least, Republicans have abandoned their typical dog whistles for blatant calls to action, and offer tacit approval when their followers commit acts of violence and terror against other Americans.

For example, after two men beat a homeless Hispanic man half-to-death, instead of a harsh condemnation Trump tacitly approved by saying his “followers are passionate and just want America to be great again.” Trump followed that abominable approval with praise for his followers for beating and kicking a BlackLivesMatter protester in Alabama. Trump said, “He should have been roughed up. It was disgusting what he was doing.” What the man was doing was exercising his 1st Amendment right while being black; in many Republican minds that constitutionally-protected right “was disgusting” simply because the American citizen exercising it was not white.
Trump is certainly not alone in inciting terror. A day before the wingnut hater stormed the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood and murdered three innocent Americans, evangelical freak-of-nature and Cuban-Canadian immigrant Cruz boasted that he had won the unwavering endorsement of an evangelical fanatic that called for the execution of women’s healthcare providers. The man Cruz gloated over was Newman who wrote that it is every 'christian’s' “responsibility rightly involves executing abortionists for their crimes;” the crime of performing a legal medical procedure. Newman also harshly criticized the conviction of Paul Hill for murdering a Florida abortion doctor arguing that “there was no justice because the court prevented him from presenting the legal defense of justifiable defensive action.”
Cruz has also won the ringing endorsement of evangelical zealots calling for the government to begin, forthwith, executing homosexuals according to old testament dictates. The justification, like Republican haters calling for abortion providers’ murders, for calling for executing LGBT people is the religio-wingnuts’ delusion that the 'christian' bible, and not the U.S. Constitution, is the law of the land and Republicans have spent no small amount of time incrementally making that false belief a reality; it is why they are not demanding their followers dial back their religion-inspired hate.
After the Colorado Springs massacre, baptist huckster Huckabee said unnecessary deaths are bad, but he couched that remark by claiming Planned Parenthood is responsible for unnecessary fetal deaths. For the thousandth time, the 'christian' bible’s dog said that until a fetus exits the womb and ‘breathes air’ it is NOT a living being. But telling the truth according to the book the religio-wingnuts claim gives them dog-authority to murder abortion providers is as much an abomination to evangelicals as practicing jesus’ teachings.
The list of demographics that Republicans hate, and have whipped their base to frenzied rage to take action against, is exhaustive. Republicans have used fear and hatred to target the poor regardless of race, minorities, environmentalists, immigrants, liberals, women, scientists, gays, non-christians, workers and anyone who does not support the religio-wingnut and corporate agenda. Unfortunately, the Republicans’ “stochastic terrorism” is not only responsible for transforming America into a nation resembling sectarian Iraq, they have Americans’ blood on their hands and instead of dialing back their incitement, they are on the verge of turning their supporters on the rest of the country.
There are some pundits, and Republicans for that matter, who claim they are not responsible for the so-called “lone wolves” committing murder, mayhem, and acts of terror. However, whether officially, or just in passing, the national Republican cabal refuses to condemn fear and hate mongering that has led to terrorism against American citizens and it is why the Republican cabal is without a doubt a certifiable hate group and now is the time for the SPLC to make it official.

President Obama Expresses Confidence That Democrats Will Keep The White House In 2016

President Obama responded to a question about his successor keeping any climate change agreements by expressing confidence that Democrats will keep the White House in 2016.
Transcript via The White House:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Do you believe that Turkey is doing enough to strengthen its northwest border with Syria? How is it that a NATO country with as large a military as Turkey has, has not sealed its border? And is that something that you raised today with President Erdogan?

And then, to put a finer point on the climate change question, can leaders gathered here believe that the United States will keep its commitments, even after you’ve left office, if a Republican succeeds you in the White House?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Just with respect to my successor, let me, first of all, say that I’m anticipating a Democrat succeeding me. (Laughter.) I’m confident in the wisdom of the American people on that front.
But even if somebody from a different party succeeded me, one of the things that you find is when you’re in this job, you think about it differently than when you’re just running for the job. And what you realize is what I mentioned earlier, that American leadership involves not just playing to a narrow constituency back home, but you now are, in fact, at the center of what happens around the world, and that your credibility and America’s ability to influence events depends on taking seriously what other countries care about.
Now, the fact of the matter is there’s a reason why you have the largest gathering of world leaders probably in human history here in Paris. Everybody else is taking climate change really seriously. They think it’s a really big problem. It spans political parties. You travel around Europe, and you talk to leaders of governments and the opposition, and they are arguing about a whole bunch of things — one thing they’re not arguing about is whether the science of climate change is real and whether or not we have to do something about it.
So whoever is the next President of the United States, if they come in and they suggest somehow that that global consensus — not just 99.5 percent of scientists and experts, but 99 percent of world leaders — think this is really important, I think the President of the United States is going to need to think this is really important. And that’s why it’s important for us to not project what’s being said on a campaign trail, but to do what’s right, and make the case.

The reality is that there is only one presidential candidate who comprehends the enormity of the job of being president, and that is Hillary Clinton. President Obama was correct about the rest of the candidates in both parties. He seemed to be speaking from a bit of personal experience. The leap from governor or senator to president is gigantic. The leap from never holding public office to the White House is a disaster waiting to happen.
The next president will need to deal with global challenges. He or she will have to work with other countries and governments. When one looks at both the candidates and electoral map demographics, Democrats have a clear advantage. There isn’t a single candidate in the Republican field who looks capable of flipping enough of the states that Obama won to give Republicans the White House.
Democratic voters understand that the gains of the last eight years are on the line next year. While Republicans squabble among themselves, Democrats are unified and working towards the common goals of keeping the White House and taking back the Congress. There is a lack of complacency among Democrats, and President Obama’s strong political leadership in the fourth quarter of his presidency is on one of the main reasons why Democrats are ready for 2016.

President Obama Knows Exactly Who’s Going To Be The Next President

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Bernie Sanders Storms The Senate Floor And Drops A Megaton Reality Bomb On Republicans

Sen. Bernie Sanders took to the Senate floor and shattered Mitch McConnell’s Obamacare repeal delusion by dropping a fact bomb on the Republican cabal.
On the Senate floor, Sen. Sanders said:
I think everybody here in the Senate understands this, the bill we are debating today is a complete waste of time. This is just another reason why the American people have so little respect for the Congress.
There are major crises facing our country and the Republican leadership once again is attempting to repeal Obamacare. I kind of lost track about how many times this effort has been made. I think in the House it was over fifty. I don’t know how many it is here in the Senate.
So let me break the news to my Republican colleagues, although I am sure that they already got the news. And that is Obama is not going to sign a bill repealing Obamacare. I think that is not likely to happen, and what we are doing today is just a waste of time.

….
The last thing we need is a budget reconciliation bill that throws 17 million Americans off of health insurance and denies nearly 3 million women the health care they need by defunding Planned Parenthood.
The reason why the American people are angry and the reason why the Congress is so unpopular is that the Congress is not addressing the real problems that are impacting their lives each and every day. At a time when the rich are getting richer, poverty is increasing, and the middle class has been in a 40-year decline, we need a budget that improves the lives of all Americans, not just the people on the top.

Sanders delivered the blunt truth to the Grand Old Reality Challenged Cabal. Their reconciliation bill/wish list of taking away health care from seventeen million people while defunding Planned Parenthood is never going to happen. Period. It isn’t going to happen. President Obama will never sign the bill, and Republicans will never have the votes needed to override his veto.
Bernie Sanders took to the Senate floor just a day after having hernia surgery and spoke the complete truth. The American people have nothing but contempt for the Republican run Congress because they keep pulling idiotic stunts like trying to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood.
There are real problems in the United States that Republicans continue to ignore to chase their favorite delusion that they can force President Obama to repeal the ACA.
Sanders dropped a reality bomb on Senate Republicans and fearlessly spoke the truth to a Senate majority that refuses to live in reality.