SUMMARY: In a scathing analysis, we explore Trump’s pathological narcissistic obsession with revenge by using the pro-social role that revenge plays in maintaining social order and restoring injured status and honor. However, when revenge becomes the soul goal of a powerful person or a large segment of a population, it can endanger the survival of a country. Trump’s textbook narcissism, extensive narcissistic wounds, and the psychology of revenge are used to appraise our current national and world situation. True progress in repairing the open seeping wound that Trump has left upon our country requires restraint and understanding, rather than a perpetual cycle of retaliation. With a sharp wit and a keen eye for societal dynamics, the longer-term implications of a cycle of revenge and payback are considered, and a more constructive approach to addressing grievances is needed.
KEY WORDS: revenge, psychology, Trump, Middle East, conflict, retaliation, division, progress, constructive, payback
COMMENT: How can we as a society break free from the destructive cycle of revenge and move towards more constructive forms of conflict resolution?
“I think there has to be retribution. I think there has to be payback. I think the people that did this to me, I think they have to suffer.”
Read the Full Transcripts of Donald Trump’s Interviews With TIME on Time on 30 April 2024
It should come as no surprise to regular readers that Fraud and Rapist wants revenge on those who have indicted him and now convicted him. All you’ve ever needed to know about Trump is that he is a narcissist. Revenge is what narcissists do. And, since he is a textbook malignant narcissistic personality disorder, revenge for harms both real and imagined is what he wants.
So, scratch my ass and call my fingers stinky, why are we writing about Trump’s narcissism, AGAIN!?! Is there anything new to say about it at all? Well, yes, yes there is. First, we should all be sure to listen to Trump’s own words when he describes his desire for revenge and retribution. I mean, when someone tells you who they are and all that. Why isn’t it WSTYWTABTFT? Okay, never mind.
Then, there is the social role that revenge plays, like gossip and reputation. We should understand that because that’s what Trump is trying to do to “liberals.”
And last, there is the resonance that Trump’s personal sense of revenge and retribution has with MAGA’s racial need for violent threats of revenge and retribution.
The Implications of the Trump’s Narcissism
Given the amount that Trump talks about revenge, it is fair to say he is obsessed. It is all that he thinks about, really. I know this because he is such a textbook narcissist. If you want to check the textbook definition of narcissism, see this blog post, otherwise, we’ll settle for this dictionary-type definition:
A personality type that is characterized by extreme selfishness, grandiosity, and a craving for admiration. And, boy howdy, does that describe the felonious rapist in spades, amirite? Do we need to go through the ten symptoms and check off the ones that he meets (Spoiler: he meets them all)?
Because a narcissist has to maintain a delusion of perfection, it takes all of their psychic energy. It is the only thing they are capable of doing is believing that they are perfect. They are terrified that someone, anyone will see through the delusion to the blackhole where a shred of self-esteem should be. Since everyone knows he’s not perfect, he’s mainly maintaining the delusion for his own benefit.
Trump’s Revenge: The Narcissist’s Quest for Payback
Anytime something challenges this caricature of perfection, it is a narcissistic wound. Anything that exposes the lie that is at the core of Trump’s life is experienced as a deep painful injury. He loses his narcissistic swagger. He’s knocked off balance. He flops around like one of the semi-inflated wiggly monstrosities that swindly-type business put out front to attract attention to themselves.
To soothe his wound, he has to destroy, utterly and completely destroy, whatever or whoever inflicted the wound. But, Trump is a coward. He can’t risk actually doing something himself in case he fails. It is much easier to lie and say he did or didn’t do something than actually do it, like when he called Milwaukee horrible and made plans to stay in Chicago to commute to the RNC, and then said he didn’t say it and he never made those plans.
Now, the narcissistic wounds have been staking up fast and furious: his TWO impeachments! His LOST election! His FAILED insurrection! His LOSS of his business license! His $83 million damages he owes to E Jean Carrol! His FOUR FELONY CRIMINAL INDICTMENTS! His CONVICTION on 34 state felony charges!
A delusion of perfection can only take so much, so Trump now vows retribution and like every playground bully he points and pouts as he whines about the other kid starting it and muttering that he’ll get them when the teacher’s not around.
“If I run and if I win, which I believe I will, I will instruct my Attorney General to immediately investigate Biden. He started it, he and his cronies, and they have to pay for what they’ve done to me and to the country. There has to be accountability, there has to be justice.”
Read the Full Transcripts of Donald Trump’s Interviews With TIME on Time on 30 April 2024
After his legal battering, both civil and criminal, Trump needs to avenge his narcissistic wounds. He is desperate fo a win, right now, and the only thing he has are his own jactations of perfection.
The Psychology of Revenge
The psychology of revenge is closely tied to this need to restore one’s sense of status and control after a narcissistic injury. As explained by researcher Ian McKee, “Revenge fulfills several important psychological functions, including restoring a sense of power, regaining status, and deterring future harm.”
The Pro-Social Benefits of Revenge
As in all mental health disorders, the person takes a perfectly normal psychological event, like the desire for revenge, and makes it pathological, lets it get out of control and prevent them from living a productive, healthy, happy life. As it turns out, revenge is just another example because it has its benefits.
First, it is motivated by a sense of a just world where good people shouldn’t be wronged. Who doesn’t want a just world? Who doesn’t want to prevent people from being wronged, amirite? It helps us in two ways: it helps us recover from injury, and it helps us maintain society.
Revenge, even just fantasies of revenge without the follow through, can take us a long way towards feeling restored from what ever injury we’ve experienced. We’ve all been there, right, but few of us actually act on our revenge fantasies. This restoration of status, honor, and control helps us take our lives back from whatever has disrupted them. Generally, that is a good thing.
And second, revenge or the threat of revenge can help maintain a social order. Vengeful behaviors have been observed across primates and human societies. It is one of the universals, strongly suggesting that revenge evolved as a useful tool that benefited our gene pool. How does that work?
Advocates of the death penalty have long touted its mythical preventive effects. Turns out, those are illusory. But, that doesn’t mean the act of revenge that our justice system embodies doesn’t help restore a sense of social justice and benefit society as a whole. Bringing a criminal to justice helps us have confidence in maintaining the social order, and, actually deters people from committing crimes. Speed traps actually do help control speeding, for example. Confronting murders with their victims survivors not only helps the survivors grieve their loss, it helps us all feel like the system is working and feel safer because of it.
Revenge and honor-based cultures have been intertwined throughout human history. In many traditional societies, a wrong committed against one’s family or tribal group was not just an individual slight, but an attack on the entire community’s status and worth. Engaging in revenge was seen as a moral obligation to restore that wounded honor, even if it came at great personal cost. This dynamic can still be observed today in certain regions, such as parts of the Middle East, Latin America, and the American South, where cultures place an exceptionally high value on vengeance. However, the norms surrounding acceptable forms of retaliation vary widely – from formalized blood feuds to more covert acts of retribution. Understanding these cultural nuances is crucial for appreciating how deeply rooted the psychological drivers of revenge can be.
Unfortunately, the current political landscape in the United States exemplifies how the human propensity for revenge can have profoundly destabilizing effects. Trump has demonstrated how revenge when taken to pathological extremes can be destructive. Trump’s vindictive actions and rhetoric have contributed to a dangerous polarization that threatens the very foundations of American democracy. Right now, Trump’s lust for revenge is threatening to take us all down, and by us all, I mean the whole ding-dang-darn world because Trump will sell us all to the fossil fuel industry so some CEO can hold 500 billion in dying company stocks instead of just 100 billion should he win in November.
The Anti-Social Risks of Revenge
For revenge to be constructive rather than destructive, it has to be constrained. It has to fit the crime and the person on the receiving end has to know why they’re receiving the punishment, or we’re all Balkanized by the experience, amirite? We’re all living on the Gaza Strip trapped between Hamas, the IDF, and Jar-Jar Binksher’s Saudi fueled fantasy of luxury resorts.
That’s the downside of revenge. It’s great as a TV trope that gets you into the plot of the page-turning summer novel, but it ain’t no way to live your life, just ask OJ Simpson. Oh wait, you can’t. He’s dead, having died a disgraced shadow of his former self because he let revenge get out of hand.
While revenge may offer short-term psychological benefits, research has shown that unchecked vengeance-seeking can have profoundly negative long-term consequences. Studies have linked excessive focus on getting even to increased rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. The perpetual stress of being embroiled in cycles of retaliation takes a heavy toll, both personally and interpersonally. Relationships often suffer as individuals become consumed by their need for payback, distorting their empathy and ability to let go. Additionally, communities can become irreparably fractured as vendettas spiral, eroding the social fabric that holds society together. Clearly, while revenge may feel justified in the moment, it is a dish best served in moderation – lest it poison the very well-being it seeks to restore.
In the end, the psychology of revenge is a double-ended dildo capable of fucking us in multiple ways. When Trump is leading his howling flying monkey chorus, the discordant cacophonous song of revenge is one that will shatter crystal, not because of the high notes, but because they’re just throwing it against the walls! While it may fulfill certain psychological needs and play a role in maintaining social order, unchecked vengeance-seeking can quickly spiral out of control and inflict lasting damage on individuals, communities, and society as a whole, especially when it is based on delusions, delusions that only serve to prop up impossible views of the self as the narcissist Trump has to have or to maintain the fantasy of racial superiority that the white supremacists who are MAGA entertain. When taken to these pathological extremes, it can only be destructive and must be resisted by the sane.
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Image Attribution
This image was generated using Poe’s StableDiffusionXL bot using the prompt, A political cartoon of Trump leading a howling flying monkey squad throwing crystalware against the walls
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Categories: Narcissistic Personality
The Psy of Life 
Once a system falls into (or, is pushed) a cycle of revenge for even the slightest and/or imaginary perceived disrespect (or, lack of fear), revenge seeking and action becomes normalized, even obligatory in the name of honor. That’s the point at which road rage becomes a fire fight, or shooting a child for shoplifting a candy bar becomes justified. And, of course, any form or level of political opposition is deadly and compromise is anathema.
Trump’s obsession with revenge is contagious. He normalizes the condition. When I hear of the individuals and groups on the far right talk of civil war, I hear that hunger for revenge on enemies, real and imagined, tribal and personal.
The experience of taking a satisfying vengeance is, in the moment, a powerful reward, enough so to be addictive. Then, the person will find more things by which to be offended and create more, and ever more slight and trivial reasons to seek that addictive fix.
Within a political or religious (and especially the combination of the two) the related need for an ever narrower ideological/theological purity has the same destructive effect. This can already be seen in the Trumpist GOP.
In the combination of revenge obsession and purity obsession there is no end of targets and no one is ever safe.
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Howdy Bob!
Righteous indignation and violent fantasies of every white gun owner being Dirty Harry and out toughing the punks who don’t feel lucky and shooting the ones who do is a mighty good gig if you can get it. The resulting dopamine, serotonin, and endorphin high is something that no one easily lets go of.
The thing about the culture war is that it never ends, no matter how many battles you win. The Puritans came to America so they could be the ones discriminating against those who didn’t love Jesus right, and damned if the heathens didn’t follow them across the oceans and fight them for the right to be the religious oppressor!
Trump has tapped an infinite gold mine. All he needs to do is keep them ginned up and frothing at the mouth. And for that, they are handing him their wallets and their lives.
Huzzah!
Jack
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It is problem enough when a tribe comes to feel offended by the look or actions of another tribe, but once a tribe comes to the place where they and their God are offended by the very existence, the very idea that such as that other tribe could exist, then the stage is set for genocide, for the purification or cleansing of the race, the land, the blood, or the world. Lest we forget, before the Nazis came for the Jews, they came for the homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled or deformed, and the mentally ill. Our Christian nationalists seem to be having that feeling about drag queens and transexuals, as well as the shadowy minions of the deep state.
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Howdy Bob!
That is a very valid point. The Christian nationalists have a legislative and social agenda, the details of which are concerning. They are coming for many of the social practices that we take for granted and are no longer controversial: contraception, interracial marriage, and divorce being just a few that are being discussed in certain parts of the media. They are targeting distinct groups just for existing and wanting them to disappear — again groups that have been accepted and make up a portion of our social sphere — trans folks, drag queens, immigrants — and some that don’t really exist in the public arena, furries. They want to limit the public behavior of these groups and the outlaw the private behavior of these groups. We’ll be looking at reviving sodomy and blue laws before you know it.
Fortunately, Trump and Dobbs have mobilized much of the electorate in ways that we haven’t seen in over a hundred years. The turn out in the 2020 election was 66.8%. The last time it was that high was in 1900 when the ill-fated McKinley was elected. And the mid-term of 2022 was 50% which hadn’t been seen since 1914 during Wilson’s first administration — also a period of racist revival BTW. Since Trump landed on our stage voter turn out has increased. Hopefully, this will continue.
Huzzah!
Jack
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And in Montana, a petition to put an abortion rights amendment on the ballot was just submitted with twice the needed signatures from more than enough counties. There is hope.
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I’ve always said that Trump would rue the day he decided to run and Republicans will rue the day Dobbs was decided.
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The old saying goes that if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. They don’t know how to do that. Instead, they dig faster, double down, triple down, and get more extreme.
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A narcissist literally cannot learn. Thinks they’re perfect. Why would they change the perfect thing they’re doing? And, any sycophant who says otherwise just gets buried along with anyone who minds being thrown under the bus.
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And, as long as the MAGAs keep draining their retirement accounts to send him money, why spoil a good thing by doing something different? As for the sycophants, the definition of RINO will shift from critics to those guilty of faint praise, to those too quiet or too slow to sing his praises.
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Not only is Trump draining the retirement accounts of MAGA, he’s draining the coffers of the RNC and starving all of the other GOP candidates. The only way to continue that grift is to keep upping the ante. They hype has to keep reaching higher and higher heights. The outrage, greater and greater levels. For that, you need boogeypeople, which the “RINO” fills nicely, but as the number of RINOs dwindles towards extinction, you need to shift the definition to include more people. It’s straight out of Hitler’s Fascist Propaganda Playbook.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Stalin’s purges are a similar example. He even purged the general who won the war for him, because he was too popular.
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Trump says he has chosen his VP. I’m sure he has, but that doesn’t mean whoever he was thinking of yesterday is who he’s thinking of today or will be tomorrow or will be who is announced. But, you can be damn sure that whoever it is will not be anyone favored by the pundits or who will outshine him on any metric. Same as with Stalin. Can’t be more better than the Grand Felonious Rapist.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Yes, he’s looking for a sock puppet with no independent ambition.
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He’s not going to have another Mike Pence that’s for sure.
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Oh, right, that’s another requirement, no conscience.
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Just look at the chaos Trump had caused, inciting anger in the, masses, and, he didn’t even have to, lift a finger, for all of his followers to, do his bidding FOR him, imagine how LOW the, U.S. will, sink, if he gets, voted into, office again? And, chances that he will, as the voters in the, U.S. are now quite, upset over how the country is, whollly supportive of Israel’s, preventing Palestine from setting up its own, country, how the U.S. voted NO in the UN over Palestine setting up an self-government from Israel, and the anti-Israeli support protests, the slow-to-come-back-up econmoy, and, all of these will, add up to a, high chance of Republicans’, winning the persidency in November, and the Republicans have, NO other, candidates than Trump, as Trump would NEVER allow anybody to, stand against him, the U.S. is, bound to, sink to an, all-time, LOW in its, history, come November, after Biden loses out in the Presidential race, and, chances are, the , Republicans will, also gain in the number of seats in the, House too then
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Howdy Taurus!
The funny thing is, the US economy is not slow to come back up because it never went down. We’ve the best post-pandemic economy in the world. Every economic indicator shows that the US economy is strong and thriving. People haven’t gotten over the post-pandemic greedflation of corporations taking advantage of supply chain problems, but there are signs that that is changing and perceptions of the economy, despite persistent Republican disinformation, is becoming more accurate. There are also signs that Biden is gaining and Trump is slipping.
The election is far from guaranteed for either side.
We are agreed, though, that should Trump get elected, it will mark an all time low for the US and the world. He will sell us all to fossil fuel companies.
The question is how can we break the revenge cycle that Trump wants to create? How can we reassure rural conservative white Christians that the communities of color won’t treat them as badly when they are in the minority as the rural conservative white Christians treat the communities of color when they are in the majority? The collective narcissism of white nationalists won’t let them come to any other conclusion other than the communities of color will seek revenge for their ill treatment at the hands of the white majority, but that is the topic of another blog post.
Huzzah!
Jack
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