Our son recently sent me some thoughts about narcissists, particularly how they fail to read certain situations accurately because they cannot read other people accurately. It’s an interesting issue for many reasons.
For example, how did Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves allow themselves to be suckered into the recent winter fuel payment debacle? It’s worth using the word “suckered” because they seem to have been politically gullible, as if there was a covert intention to undermine their position and do it early.
With winter not so far away, Starmer and Reeves appear to have been lured onto the front pages of the freezing pensioner picture, as if someone knew they were gullible enough to buy it. As if that someone knew they wouldn’t see it as others were bound to see it. That’s the interesting possibility.
Our son used Chris Watts as a particularly extreme example to make the wider point more clearly - He (Watts) went out before the world media seeming pretty similar to a politician. Stupidly believed he could lie to the world and people weren’t going to see through his poorly constructed lies. He made all kinds of mistakes, referring to his family in the past tense and other awful errors.
Confidently at ease with public speaking, many members of our political class do appear to have this same inability to construct their lies convincingly, this same transparent focus on what they want, not how other people will read their words.
Narcissism is a spectrum of character traits and applying the concept to our political class has its limitations, but so often prominent public figures seem unable to understand the language of anyone they are not aligned with politically.
They don’t do genuine debate, being strangely intelligent and stupid at the same time. Curiously gullible too, much more gullible than they should be.
11 comments:
I've been interested to see the pile of lies about his life that the Dem VP candidate Mr Walz has told over the years. Apart from disguising his yellowing out of the National Guard, the lies are all pretty small beer. But the point is that he lied about things where his lying could easily be established.
Somebody is slandering our Dear Leader. I invite all readers of this blog to heap scorn on such "satire" and demand the death penalty for it.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I_KOlubCXOE
They really do believe that we are all thick. Short planks, mince, pig shit,
This is the obvious corollary to their belief that they have attained their lofty positions because they are really super clever. And they have brigades of well paid spads and lobbyists all telling them they are as wise as Solomon, as cunning as a herd of cunning foxes. Right up there with Baldrick.
And every cunning plan they have only makes us poorer while making them richer and more acceptable among their new bestest friends in WEF, WHO, Davos, etc.
I was thinking only yesterday that Starmer *must* blame the Conservatives otherwise the history defining over-reaction to COVID would make a much better source of blame. But Starmer wanted earlier, harder, longer Lockdowns which undermines the value of that source of blame.
Starmer dreads people accusing him of worse failure than the Conservatives so he is promoting many distractions. Smoking bans, increasing taxes, bully censorship, EU agreements. If he gets away with such distractions then he will become the Glorious Leader (Look at me! Look at me!) immune to criticism - for none will be permitted.
Talking of lying liars lying to us:
https://realclimatescience.com/2024/08/nobel-prize-winning-forecast/#gsc.tab=0
Maybe it has something to do with the thrill of gambling and risk-taking. They have to raise some money somehow, and one can imagine sitting round a table and saying "Yes, it's risky, but we can probably get away with it!" After all, some things they actually are getting away with.
And thanks to dearieme for that video - absolutely brilliant!
dearieme - yes the petty and easily checked lies of Walz are odd, as if his circle is one where things aren't checked for veracity but for status. Still odd though. I like the YouTube link, I wonder how long it will stay up?
Doonhamer - yes they believe they are where they are because of their intellectual superiority over us. Nothing will persuade them otherwise, no failure however disastrous will do that.
DJ - it would be interesting to know the source of the distractions, because they seem to be petty and added together seem designed to attract the contempt of most of the voting population.
dearieme - Gore doesn't seem to care about failed predictions at all, as if it's just about the money and he'll make it while he can.
Sam - Starmer doesn't come across as a gambler, but gambling on his ability as an advocate might come to the same thing, At the moment, much of what is being done seems like activity for the sake of activity.
But there are plenty of people just like Starmer, amongst the general population, so we can see how there's a ready supply of them for public office. The fact that such people seem to have a talent for getting into politics, to the exclusion of others, or so it seems, would perhaps be worthy of further study, although I think many of us could guess the reason.
Tammly - yes, the general mediocrity is a clue that the talents required are not rare. Everyone has probably met a Starmer or similar.
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