This is is a speculative search for meaning in the new terminology of political discourse and what it tells us about the epic transition from the politics of the Commons to the politics of privatization all thru the lens of the myth of Narcissus.

::::::::

In this essay, based on hearing the word narcissist used as a replacement for words such as "commie," "fascist," and other derogatory kill the messenger terms, I examine the original meaning of the term and seek to understand why it has replaced political discourse as the means of invalidating, through an ancient logical fallacy of guilt by association, as well as what it reveals about the arc of history and our chances to survive.

This does not make invalid the correct historical use of such terms as communist and fascist but suggests that personal smears, based on individual psychopathology, have replaced traditional ideological smears, as well as descriptions. The question I raise is: why has this transition from the realm of the idea to the realm of the psyche taken place? What are the underlying reasons and what are the effects?

Let us begin by understanding the origins of the term and its original application. In Greek mythology, the figure of Narcissus was a hunter famous for his great beauty. He was filled with hubris in disdaining them who loved him. He could love only himself.

Nemesis was a goddess who punished those who suffered from pride viewed as arrogance before the gods. She attracted Narcissus to a pool where he fell in love with his own image. Karma is a b*tch!

Nemesis, in origin, refers to getting what is due. The goddess is often depicted with a weapon of retribution, a dagger or whip. She is associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In a word, nemesis means justice, which combines punishment with mercy, retribution with love.

To connect the dots, it seems likely that the term narcissist caught fire when Donald Trump took the public stage to announced his candidacy for President based on the claim that he, and only he, could be trusted (because he said he was self-funded, a claim refuted by the fact that 90% of the financing for his run against Clinton was outside money) and only he could fix things. This arrogance, amplified by his frequent flights of self-promotion (I am very rich, I have a good memory, I know more than the generals, I am the only one who can clean the swamp, etc), naturally led many people to begin seeing him as a blatant narcissist, a man in love with his own image, which itself was a manufactured product of branding. His motto is: I alone. He is not only the man in the mirror; he is the man in the bubble of his own self-intoxication.

This excessive sense of pride in his own superiority led him to many outrageous claims, including earlier in his career when he bragged about grabbing p*ssy because he was a rock star and even saying if he daughter Ivanka were a little older, he would be dating her. At this point, the story of Narcissus and Nemesis gets juicy and reveals something about the overreach of those who fall in love with themselves.

Nemisis and Echo

An early Greek writer wrote of the background of Nemesis:

""Rich-haired Nemesis gave birth to her [Helene (Helen)] when she had been joined in love with Zeus the king of the gods by harsh violence. For Nemesis tried to escape him and liked not to lie in love with her father Zeus the son of Kronos (Cronus); for shame and indignation vexed her heart: therefore she fled him over the land and fruitless dark sea. But Zeus ever pursued and longed in his heart to catch her. Now she took the form of a fish and sped over the waves of the loud-roaring sea, and now over Okeanos' (Oceanus') stream and the furthest bounds of Earth, and now she sped over the furrowed land, always turning into such dread creatures as the dry land nurtures, that she might escape him."

It is not unfair to recall the obvious lust that Trump, the modern Narcissus, has expressed for his daughter. But the story gets more sordid. In the words of a later Greek author, "Nemesis, as she fled from Zeus' embrace, took the form of a goose; whereupon Zeus as a swan had intercourse with her. From this union, she laid an egg, which some herdsman found among the trees and handed over to Lede (Leda). She kept it in a box, and when Helene was hatched after the proper length of time, she reared her as her own."

Helene, of course, was the famous Helen of Troy whose beauty "launched a thousand ships" in the attack on Troy. Thus beauty and war are connected, and we are reminded of the report that Trump launched not a thousand but 49 Tomahawk missiles on Syria at the behest of his daughter, the beautiful Ivanka,who urged him to respond to the "beautiful babies" who had been killed by nerve gas by attacking Syria.

Narcissus in the myth cannot abandon the image of himself that he loves so much that he died gazing at his image. Nemesis herself, the beautiful agent of divine retribution, has a streak which makes her condemn those who have too much, to punish those who have but do not deserve great blessings they have not earned. And we are reminded that Trump, who claims to be worth 9 billion, based mostly on his image or brand( and admittedly made with "other people's money" (often thru bankruptcy where they lost and he profited), was born rich and got large loans from his wealthy father. In 1999, in an interview with the Times, he remarked that those who cannot get rich in America are "morons."

And that is the origin of the term narcissism, which today means an obsession with one's self, one's appearance, and how others see one. Even "morons" will be courted if it means enhancing one's own sense of self-importance; and once they have been so used, they too are then discarded. "Supporters, we have won. You were nasty and vicious but you can be mellow. You can go home now. I no longer need you." For the narcissist, others are not loved but needed and then discarded.

The name Narcissus is based on the Greek word "narkau" meaning I grow numb. And thus the association with the other current term to describe arrogant leaders, psychopath: one who is numb to the feelings of others; one who lacks empathy.

The story of the impulse which led Nemesis to trick Narcissus into falling in love with his own image was in retribution for the way Narcissus( who disdained all who loved him except for the illusion of his own likeness) reacted when another beauty Echo tried to seduce him. Echo deeply infatuated with Narcissus followed him and when, annoyed, asked, "Who's there?" Echo just repeated, "Who's there?" When finally she revealed herself and tried to embrace him, he told her to get lost..... and heartbroken, she disappeared into the woods until nothing was left of her but an echo. These are the discarded wives of Donald Trump....and his shunned daughter Tiffany......for no one can love a man who is in love with only his own image. Even Melania can no longer bear the sight of him.

In Ivanka, Trump sees his own image, transformed into great beauty. In his abandoned and neglected wives, he relives the fate of Narcissus, who can love only himself.

Now why has the psychological description replaced what formerly was a kind of political cursing: a disliked leader was a tyrant, a despot, a fascist, and later even "liberal" became a curse word. To what can we assign the cause for transforming formerly political and ideological name-calling into psychological detraction? It most certainly started before Trump made the word the nemesis of his branding efforts to make the name Trump synonymous with class or elite.

I suggest that the late Christopher Lasch first understood the historical roots of this transformation of the political (ie that which concerns the common good) into the individual (ie that which concerns only the private person) in his 1979 book The Culture of narcissism, in which he discussed the erosion of traditional values of family and community. As a Harvard student, he roomed with John Updyke, the satirist of American narcissism, and tho he came from the left and was a neo-Marxist, he evolved into an iconoclast and critic of liberalism and was often celebrated by conservatives, who proclaim for family values but support causes which are destructive of the family.

His neo-Marxism evolved into a defense of traditional values and a criticism of capitalism (consumerism, individualism, greed) from the right. To facilitate this evolution, his source turned from Marxian historicism to Freud and the focus on the individual psyche.

Lasch argued that social developments (the erosion of family values, consumerism, etc) had created a new "therapeutic" way of thinking and that the social network of the past had collapsed into the fragile bubble of narcissism. The focus of consumer capitalism had destroyed the family nexus and replaced it with a fixation on the self, looking out for #1. And this is the essence of the culture of narcissism, the replacement of the collective or communal unit (family, community) with the private, the individual, the isolated self.

In his view, this narcissistic individualism was based on the collapse of social connections, and so we can draw a parallel as the language of this new psychological culture, which focused on one's own image became the way that reality was described: a tyrant was no longer a despot but a narcissist. If someone lied they no longer had betrayed the public trust but were simply selfish. As historically the Commons was fenced in and transformed into private property ("The rich have feelings in every part of their possessions." Rousseau) the language eliminated the rhetoric of the commons and replaced it with the rhetoric of the private person, the isolated individual looking out only for himself. This transformation was best expressed by Margaret Thatcher when she said " And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first." There is no common good, only self-interest.

This comment, I think, is the political equivalent of cultural genocide: society has been denied existence: "There is no such thing as society."

I would call this the genocide of social humanity. And it is a short step from only individuals exist to only consumers exist, as well as useless eaters.

I think the transition from the political to the therapeutic mindset can be understood as the mirror image (speaking of Narcissus) of the political discourse shifting from the Commons (the common good, shared values, the community) to the privatized world of neoliberalism where that which is common must become private.

Privatization is the final phase of predatory capitalism which transforms that which belong to all into private property. This is the political myth of neoliberal capitalism falling in love with its own image (the god of the free market, the god of money, the divine justice in the rich getting richer by having all public wealth transferred to private pockets) and becoming fixated on its own image.: With the fall of the Soviet Union and official communism, it was declared that liberal democracy (ie capitalism) was the end of history.

The End of History and the Last Man was a 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama, in which he argued that the triumph of Western liberal democracy marks the endpoint of humanity's political evolution and the final form of human government. Wikipedia notes that "As a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine, Fukuyama is an important figure in the rise of neoconservatism ."

In this book, the "victory" over the great rival to capitalism and its mask of liberal democracy, the West fell in love with its own image and has been unable to avert its gaze since.The end of history means: I cannot stop gazing at my own image; nothing else matters.

Those who seek to bring triumphant capitalism out of its stupor of self-love are shunned, as Narcissus shunned Echo. In a sense, we may see the New Left, the left that has repudiated both Stalinist pseudo-communism and exceptionalist pseudo-liberal democracy as the Echo of an alternative to the self-destructive path of the self-infatuated religion of capitalism. Fukuyama not only shuns the Echo of the left but denies that it exists and we may say, for some of us with geat sadness (for others great glee), that the left IS just an echo of what it once was.

Summary: just as capitalism, as Lasch argued, has both become an example of narcissism and spawned a culture of narcissism and just as institutions are "the lengthened shadow of one man (Emerson)," we can see Donald Trump as the embodiment of the spirit of late stage capitalism, a billionaire oligarch full of himself, and blind to his own deficiencies.

In this case, the institution of the Presidency is being perverted by the lengthened shadow of our Narcissist-in-Chief. The man who claimed that the whole world was laughing at "us" and that it would stop when he became the Decider, now fails to see that the whole world simultaneously is laughing at this clown who pretends to rule.....and trembling at his inability to control his lust, his anger, and his desire for revenge on all who oppose him.

As he stares into the press pool and sees a figure he does not like, he strikes out at the "fake news" and "dishonest media." who tell him not only that his image is not beautiful but that it is merely an image, an illusion. Even the President of the United States must sometimes stand naked (to quote the Nobel Prize winner in Literature) and anyone who seeks to tell him he is not beautiful becomes an enemy, to be destroyed as he destroyed all the other Republicans in the primary, leaving him no top-tier choices for Vice President.

Such is the path to self-destruction brought on by falling in love with one's own image: the constant battle against those who tell you are not beautiful and the elimination of all those who might help you escape your tragic fate.

The bitter truth is that when narcissists gain power, they not only embark on a path of self-destruction but they take the rest of us down with them. The only way to avoid this, and to begin the transformation of personal self-aggrandizement (with the Presidency being the ultimate prize) back to the common good (which Rousseau defines as all that is desired minus all the personal desires) is to echo the words of the most powerful critic of the merely individual, the solely narcissistic, with the words: workers of the world unite. For in union, we reclaim our common bonds and transcend our selfish obsessions. Or as Camus put it in The Rebel:

""When I rebel, WE are."

For Camus, out of saying no to injustice arises a "strange love", a solidarity based not on personal friendship but on the renewal of the social bond: the people united can never be defeated! This is the logic by which the serial collection of individuals (such as standing immobilize in line waiting) becomes a collective unity energizing a communal response such as the mass protests in Eastern Europe in 1989 which took down (without violence) 10 heavily militarized totalitarian regimes. Just as neoliberal capitalism has destroyed the social nexus of society, it is the rebellion against this isolating order which recreates the social bonds which make human life bearable and create a committment to that which we all share together, as real as the air we breath.

We may say that with Trump, embodying the ultimate destruction of the Commons and elevating the selfish to a divine level, the pendulum has reached its most extreme point. We are not at the end of history but at the end of a radical shift from the common bonds that unite us as family, as community, as humanity, to the narcissistic claims of the entitled, who have taken blessings they have not earned and turned them into a form of self-worship: Max Weber traced the connection of Calvinism and capitalism in his insight that in the message that the mark of being 'saved" is to have arrived at great wealth. And in political terms, our First Chief Justice John Jay foreshadowed both corporate fascism and the transition from the common good to the private good when he said: "Those who own the country should run it." All that is solid, under the atomizing logic of capitalism (from the Communist Manifesto) melts into air, and all that we own in common under capitalism dissolves into private property

The Commons once loved and protected by all, has been fenced off and destroyed. Those who lived off the commons (the British free yeomen who gathered wood, hunted and took no more than needed) were reduced to wage slaves by the Enclosures Act, by which the Commons was transformed into private property, an act of theft which is the original sin of capitalism: Great fortunes are founded on great crimes, as the French say.

Founding Father and slave owner John Jay's advice has been fully realized in the Presidency of Donald Trump, our richest President, slave owner, p*ssy grabber, and a man who openly has declared his lust for his own daughter, a woman who herself claims to be a kind of Nemesis in moderating her father's uncontrolled passions. The only question that remains, if you tolerate my speculative interpretation of current politics thru the myth of Narcissus, is whether the pendulum will swing back the other way with an echo of past demands for a change on behalf of the common man.....or will the pendulum, swung too far careen out of control and take us all into nuclear winter or a Mad Max future devoid of common sympathy and ruled only by private passions.

To put it another way (for this essay is a search for meaning in the chaos of the moment): will the Trump Presidency lead to self-destruction not only of the man himself but the nation (and world) he seeks to rule....or will his lust and his clownish nature just lay an egg, out of which will burst a beauty whose abduction leads to war? Will the clown or the tyrant prevail? Should we laugh or tremble?

"

(Article changed on May 7, 2017 at 16:56)

Authors Bio:

retired, working radical egalitarian/libertarian socialist old school independent, vegan, survivor