Hegseth, the disrespectful somatic narcissist, By Hal M. Brown

 

The photo of Pete Hegseth wearing a bathing suit after being in a swim event across the Hudson River is making the rounds on social and regular media. He has a large American flag over his shoulder. In addition to wearing the bathing suit, his displaying the flag is begging for people to pay attention to him. It all says "look at me, I am buff and I am beautiful."

How disrespectful is this? Almost 3,000 people died at this site and he's there in a bathing suit suit.

Consider the public reaction if a buxom Democrat showed up there dressed in a flag version of a bikini.

Hegseth is a somatic narcissist. Here's an article about this.

Excerpt:

A somatic narcissist uses their body and the physical space around them as a way to express their narcissism. 

Their superiority and sense of entitlement come from their perception of their physical self. 

They believe they are more beautiful, stronger, or fitter than others. Flaunting their bodies, flex their muscles, and brag about the number of times people hit on them is typical behavior.

Heres another article: 14 Traits of a Somatic Narcissist

This section seems to apply Hegseth and people like RFK Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene who are also somatic narcissists:

One common trait of somatic narcissists is their tendency to boast about their fitness routines. They often highlight their achievements in the gym, emphasizing their physical strength and endurance.

These individuals may frequently share photos and updates about their workouts on social media. This constant broadcasting serves to draw attention to their dedication and physical attributes.

Somatic narcissists might also compare their fitness levels to others, often implying superiority. They take pride in being perceived as more disciplined and fit.

Conversations with these individuals can often be dominated by tales of their exercise regimes, diet plans, and physical feats. Compliments about their fitness are not just welcomed but actively sought.

This behavior reflects their need for admiration and validation through their physical appearance. The need to feel superior physically drives them to continuously seek acknowledgment for their efforts in fitness.

I'd have to know more about Hegseth to see if I thought the following applied to him: 

Somatic narcissists are often known for their superficial charm. They use their physical appearance and charisma to win people over quickly.

Their charm can be captivating, drawing others in easily. This facade helps them mask their true intentions and manipulate those around them.

They often employ compliments and flattery as key tools. This creates an illusion of genuine interest and warmth.

Behind this charming exterior, the primary goal is self-serving. They seek admiration and attention, rather than meaningful connections.

This charm can be particularly effective in social and professional settings. It helps them gain influence and control over others.

Their appearance plays a crucial role here. They invest significant time and effort into maintaining an attractive and impressive look.

Their charm is typically shallow and lacks depth. Once their goals are achieved, their interest in the person often diminishes.

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Shortly after the damning Jack Smith report was released Trump rants about... wait for it... Seth Meyers, By Hal M. Brown

The Jack Smith report about Trump's election interference was released last night a bit after midnight. Just before 1:30 AM Trump took to Truth Social to blast late night comic Seth Meyers. This is because Meyers said “Trump is caught in the middle between the MAGA diehards and the rich oligarchs who helped him get elected and he doesn’t even really know what the hell they’re talking about.”

He also said:

We know very little about what Trump’s second term will be like, given that he has no fixed principles or core beliefs or coherent ideas or constructive solutions or plans or proposals or policies or values or thoughts of any kind.

Trump “watches TV and then he scream-posts about what he just saw on TV.

Trump is “basically an intellectual Roomba. He goes in one direction until he bumps into something and then he just goes off into another direction. Watch the video here.

Reacting to this, Trump did what one might assume would be unexpected, except this is Trump, so the unexpected is expected of him. You'd think a normal person would be just raging against Jack Smith. Instead he goes after a TV comic.

This is from HuffPost:

Trump Has Middle-Of-The-Night Meltdown In Wild Rant Aimed At 'Moron' TV Host

The president-elect said he had an "obligation" to attack one specific late night host.

With just days to go before taking office, President-elect Donald Trump spent the wee hours of Tuesday complaining about late night host Seth Meyers.

“How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC, a ‘network’ run by a truly bad group of people,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website shortly before 1:30 a.m. ET. “I got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night, the first time in months, and every time I watch this moron I feel an obligation to say how dumb and untalented he is, merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast.”

Here's an example from the HuffPost article of how Trump goes after late night TV hosts:

The president-elect has long complained about late night shows for making fun of him. He has called Jimmy Kimmel ― whose joke at the Oscars really seemed to get under Trump’s skin ― “one of the dumbest human beings ever.” Trump has also slammed Jimmy Fallon as “weak and pathetic,” attacked Stephen Colbert as a “total loser,” and dismissed all of the late night hosts as “the talentless, low rated CREEPS of Late Night Television.”

This is the article on RawStory:

This is what Trump posted about Jack Smith:

"Deranged Jack Smith was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his 'boss,' Crooked Joe Biden, so he ends up writing yet another 'Report' based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was, and how completely guilty Nancy Pelosi, and others, were. Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!" 

We know that Trump is addicted to insults. In 2019 The New York Times compiled a list of the insults he hurled at 598 people, places, and things on Truth Social.

Here's the top of the list (click just to enlarge it):

Describing Trump as thin-skinned is a gross understatement. He's like a stick of old dynamite sweating nitroglycerine exploding when it's jarred. 

Trump is a known TV addict. He watches shows and is riveted when someone is talking about him. If he's insulted he's like someone in a live audience who jumps up and yells "boo." 

He is well aware that a few million people watch late night TV and may even know that viewership of Seth Meyers has increased while other late night comedy shows have declined in viewership (reference).  The immediacy of what Seth Meyers was saying about him right after the news of the Smith report was released hit him as hard, perhaps harder, than the actual Smith report (you can read it here).

Never has there been a president who is influenced by television references to himself so much. 

Not only that, instead of relying on experts in various fields to suggest people who are the best qualified for top positions as a normal president-elect would do, since he always wants to be in control, he used Fox News. From Pete Hegseth to Matt Geatz to Dr. Oz, he used Fox News to choose people. I saw a report listing six people he nominated who were regular guests or hosts on the station.

Wrap your mind around this. The content in the Smith report is damning (watch video).

It made sense for Trump to attack Smith. But then he goes on to attack someone who is a late night comic. It is tiresome for me to explain the many personality characteristics that make Trump unfit to be president. This is just one of many. If someone doesn't realize this they are totally brainwashed. 

Somewhat related (my emphasis):

Trump’s Vain Reason For Nixing ‘Saturday Night Live’ Sketch Is Finally Revealed

“SNL” alum Seth Meyers, who now hosts NBC’s “Late Night,” in 2019 recalled working alongside Trump for his hosting debut.

“It was fascinating to be around him,” Meyers, a longtime critic of the returning president, told radio host Howard Stern. Trump “was everything you would think; he didn’t have any sense of humor, but if things worked, he liked them.

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Trump posed for photo op with Alberta premier with insulting billboard on his head, By Hal M. Brown

 

I don't see anything surprising or particularly wrong with the story above. It makes sense that a conservative Canadian poltician like Alberta's premier Danielle Smith wants to curry favor with Trump. What struck me was the hat Trump was wearing. 

With Trump, vanity is a prominent part of his narcissism. In this way he's more like Narcissus than a garden variety, though toxic, narcissist. Some care about how they look, others don't.  He is what columnist Jennifer Senior called a preening narcissist (read about this here). I have a feeling that Trump likes to wear the cap, especially outdoors where it might be windy, not only because of politics, but because it covers his hair. I shouldn't have to explain why he'd want to do this.

Hat History: Of course baseball caps have evolved from the early days when they were worn pretty much exclusively by baseball players and fans. Now any hat like this is called a baseball cap.

Trump's cap has gotten bigger with larger lettering overt time.

 Now it covers about half his face:

The "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" on the cap is like a billboard. He's not sending the message "make North America great again." He's saying make my America great and make me even greater.

Here's my point. What Trump is doing with the leader of a Canadian province in this photo op is sending his MAGA message of nationalism to her and to all of her country. He is saying, really shouting, "I'm the boss." He wants to be seen as the macho bully everyone fears, not the chubby insecure doofus he'd be if his true self was revealed and he hadn't been gifted a fortune by his father. His narcissism is so deeply ingrained that there's no way he'd admit to himself that without that money it would be highly unlikely he'd be where he is today. He'd probably just be another New York City smalltime slumlord. Just consider what his niece, Mary Trump, had to say about him.

Donald is an extremely insecure person. One of the things he's most insecure about is his level of intelligence. Whenever he feels threatened, whenever he feels outclassed by somebody's superior intelligence or knowledge base, or whenever he feels contradicted, he needs to go on the attack. As he often does, he projects. He attacks the person with the thing he's most insecure about in himself.

For Trump, making America great means riding roughshod over its neighbors and other countries. This is especially relevant for Canada since he has been bloviating about making it a 51st state with the threat of using tariffs as a bludgeon

At least he took his hat off when he met with Danielle Smith indoors:

Inquiring minds may want to know why there's a patio heater inside of Mar-a-Lago. 

Calgary News article Alberta premier talks about 'tariff-free relationship' with the U.S.

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The emperor has no clothes and truth in packaging presidential promises, by Hal M. Brown

 

Bear with me on this, and if you haven't figured out why I used the illustrations above you will.

My partner and I are on the keto diet to lose the weight we gained during the pandemic. That's irrelevant to the point of this blog. To explain though, I was getting bored with the regimen of no carb protein and very low carb vegetable meals, so I ordered the keto crackers shown above from Amazon.

The picture on the package is four times as big as the real crackers and looks entirely different than the flat little squares inside. (I didn't expect a taste sensation so, in all fairness, I'd say they taste a little better than mildly flavored cardboard.)

Now to the political point of presidential packaging of promises (I am addicted to these alliterations):

Trump's promise to make life better for everyone, or at least for his supporters, is like the image on the package of crackers. The picture looks like a crunchy taste treat. It is nothing like what is really inside.

Racist, Democrat hating, LGBTQ demonizing, anti-woke warriors, and America first MAGA members of the Trump cult will get satisfaction in watching Trump's revenge tour unfold on TV. They probably are turned on by his bloviating attempts to intimidate the leaders of other countries. However, I can't see any way that these things will make the practicalities of their day to day lives better. 

I don't see the cost of living coming down. If it doesn't, people won't have more money in their pockets. They may have less. For some, imported goods prices may increase if he follows through on his tariffs. Deporting immigrants, for example, those who work in argiculture, may lead to food price increases or even shortages. 

In a less tangible way, there's what the rest of the world thinks of Trump. His supporters obviously want him to be seen as leader of the world. They want other leaders to kowtow to him the way American oligarchs have. Being mocked by leaders of Mexico, Canada, and Denmark won't have much impact. However, when other countries join in condemning him for his foreign policy decisions, and then some of them are photographed shunning him at international meetings, this may have an impact. 

This hopefully would lead to the gold plating showing cracks on the gilded Trump monument they are used to looking up to.

Trump may be ridiculed and rejected in more quarters. While I don't think he is capable of being embarrassed, his malignant narcissism may be triggered and he could do something rash like using the military to invade Greenland or Panama, or take actions against drug cartels in Mexico. He could see it as a diversionary tactic or, put another way, as wagging the dog. 

This could lead to his being sanctioned by the World Court. It could end up at the United Nations where the US would VETO any actual action, but it would still make the news. 

His hard core supporters would blow this off, but there would still be the drip-drip-drip of the realization of the truth among others who denied that the picture on the package belied the product inside.

Comparing Trump to the emperor in "The Emperor's New Clothes" became a meme. For example see Donald Trump’s emperor-has-no-clothes moment from 2022.  

Here's the well known plot of the Hans Christain Andersen story from Wikipedia just for a reminder:

The tale concerns an emperor who has an obsession with fancy new clothes, and spends lavishly on them, at the expense of state matters. One day, two con-men visit the emperor's capital. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are either incompetent or stupid. The gullible emperor hires them, and they set up looms and pretend to go to work. A succession of officials, starting with the emperor's wise and competent minister, and then ending with the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.

Finally, the weavers report that the emperor's suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that they have all been fooled. The emperor uncomfortably realizes it too, but opts to continue the procession, walking more proudly than ever. The fate of the con-men is not revealed.

More and more people will see what the grandiose preening narcissist really looks. Here's the illustration in the drawing from the Andersen book.

I used AI to make an image to add to this. I will spare you looking at one of the totally unclothed Trump images that came up when I turned off the adult content filter on the AI program I use for my blogs. 

In the story it took a young boy to shout out that the emperor was naked and confirm what everyone else was seeing. It will take more than one person to say this for it to have any major impact. This is akin to the one person in an audience begining to applaud or laugh and thus triggering an uproarious response. It is also like how in fiction a jury is depicted where an innocent person is being tried for murder and one juror is the only one who thinks they aren't guilty. This is the plot of Twelve Angry Men. It is also a subplot of several episodes of the TV series "The Equalizer" starring Queen Latifah. This features Aunt Vi who was the holdout who gradually persuaded the rest of the jury that the defendant was innocent.

In Trump's trial, the opposite would hold true. One person would be convincing the rest of the skeptical jury that he was guilty. Trump was already convicted of falsification of business records which is a kind of fraud. In this case for truth, justice, and the American way to be served, he must be convicted of a fraud perpetrated against the American people.

Addendum:

Would you have used another one of these AI images instead of the one I did?

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The politics of booze, by Hal M. Brown

 

If wine consumption is reduced significantly it will hurt wine grape growers in my home state of Oregon, across the country, and in the rest of the world. I don't know what crops, if any, would replace the grapes growing in our beautiful wine country. The picture is from one of our many road trips to this part of the state.

Rawstory has an article (above) about lawmakers calling the new surgeon general report about even light alcohol consumption being a cancer risk being an example of the "nanny state." 

The report  is on the NIH National Cancer Institute website so RFK Jr's opinion on this is important. The report could be taken offline when Trump takes over. It is important to consider that Trump not only doesn't drink, but he has negative feelings about drinking. This is because of his alcoholic older brother, Freddy, who died at 43. It has been reported (see article in VICE) that he never had a sip of alcohol. 

Whether this would influence the infamously transactional Trump to try to suppress the report or not remains to be seen. The alcohol lobby in Washington is huge and many MAGAs rage against government interference in their lives. It is not only "the deep state" that is evil in their eyes, but "the nanny state." This has not been part of the current poltical zeitgeist but with alcohol it could be.

On the health side, the crucial parts of the report for light to moderate drinkers are those explaining the cancers that this may cause. Even light drinking increases the risk for esophageal cancer. The more a person drinks the greater the risk for head, neck, liver, breast, and colorectal cancer. Just as people could understand how inhaling smoke into their lungs could lead to the deadly lung cancer, it is common sense to understand how drinking can cause cancer in the organs that involve digestion.

The major medical news here is that for years moderate drinking was considered acceptable healthwise, and for red wine, even beneficial. 

People must have accurate up to date medical information of risks. A signficant number of people stopping or cutting down on alcohol consumption would be a hardship for grape growers, manufacturers, and retailers. The economy wouldn't crash but it would certainly be affected.

It is instructive to look at what happened when the surgeon general announced the danger of smoking and thereafter.

This was published today in the On This Day In History page in The Smithsonian Magazine.

Excerpt:

Sixty years ago, about 70 million Americans smoked tobacco. An estimated 42 percent of adults identified themselves as smokers in 1965, and advertisements for cigarettes were impossible to avoid. Tobacco products were stylish and healthy, manufacturers insisted, with Camel claiming its cigarettes “don’t get your wind” and Old Gold saying its were “fresh as mountain air.”

So it came as a shock to the American public when, on January 11, 1964, their surgeon general appeared on television saying that smoking tobacco leads to disease and death.

Here's a photo from that article:

I have no idea if the surgeon general realized the coincidence of his releasing the report on this day.

For the alcohol habits of Americans to change and thus effect the economy it would take a huge cultural shift. This was written in 2014:

50 Years Later: A Closer Look at the Impacts of First Surgeon General's Report on Smoking

Excerpt:

"The surgeon general's report in 1964 was groundbreaking and led to an important cultural shift against smoking," said ACC President John Gordon Harold, MD, MACC. "Those important findings have been followed up by countless studies on the effects of smoking, which we now know are even worse than we thought. Physicians often discuss 'moderation' when helping patients change and maintain their health habits, but that is not the case with smoking. No amount of smoking is good and several studies have shown that even a small amount tobacco is very harmful. As a society we need to eliminate smoking from our culture. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in both men and women, and if almost half of those cases are from tobacco, then that is a serious problem."

(Personal Note: I feel lucky that my partner and I never developed even a taste for, let alone a need for, alcoholic beverages and we don''t drink. I'll have a small glass of champagne at a party to make a toast, but that's it.)

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I post my blogs on Stressline.org where you can subscribe (for free everywhere) and on Substack where, if you want to submit your email, you can be notified of all new blog posts. I also post them on Medium because this enables them to be easily found on internet searches.

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