Trump’s Vicious Spiral, and Why It’s So Delicious to Watch

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Right about now, something pretty remarkable’s happening. Trump’s melting down. Day after day. And each day, it gets a little worse.

His hold on culture’s slipping. His grasp on politics is weakening. His power is turning to dust.

You can feel it. I can feel it. He can feel it. 

And as he does, he grows more and more desperate. 

The desperation turns into humiliating stunts, embarrassing spectacles, made-for-headlines maneuvers that backfire.

Because the last thing that a strongman should ever be seen as is…desperate.

That’s the vicious cycle, at least in simple form, and it’s delicious to behold. I don’t mean in an overtly political way, just in the way of “we should all be against authoritarianism, whatever our everyday politics in a democracy might be.”

I want to explore this more deeply, because as it’s all slipping away from Trump, we should all take heed of how a demagogue’s power begins to fade.

The Vicious Spiral Trump’s Trapped In

What’s really happening here is a vicious cycle of narcissistic injury. 

Trump is no ordinary narcissist. He’s at the outer limits. His narcissism is infantile, meaning that he thinks of himself as the center of the universe, and you can see that in the literally infantile way he speaks, rambles, demands, screams. Trump is also a dark empath, meaning that he’s quite good at picking up on emotions, and then manipulating them for his own ends, taking him beyond a garden variety sociopath. 

For this kind of personality, narcissistic injury is everything. All of us are narcissists to some degree. Somebody looks at us funny, hesitates when they speak to us—we feel the sting of disapproval. We wonder: was I just imagining that? Am I being paranoid? For the kind of outer limits narcissist Trump is, this sort of inner process doesn’t really happen. Every perceived slight registers at an acute level.

Aside: it must be hellish to exist that way. Think about it: every little thing is about you, in grandiose ways, it has to fulfill the expectations of you as a kind of all-powerful super-baby, and yet…how can that always be? If you surround yourself with a slavish inner circle, maybe you can exist that way for a while. But nobody’s reality in the adult world is that simple.

When a narcissist at this degree is injured, a kind of fury results. And we can all see that in Trump’s increasingly unhinged responses. 

Which led to the recent event at Arlington Cemetery. His staff literally got physical with the folks there. Even the Army’s come out and condemned this.

So: for a personality this extreme, narcissistic injury leads to increasingly violent, erratic reactions. Uncontrollable ones, really, because the injury feels so severe. And the only way it can be corrected, a mind like this imagines, is to shout it all into line, to exert control, to coerce, to dominate the world back into “loving” you.

But to the world? This increasingly violent set of reactions looks very different. Suddenly, it can feel like we’re seeing the truth of who this person was all along, for the first time.

Has that ever happened in your life? You’re dating someone, or you’re friends with someone. And as they react violently to a perceived slight, not even from you, just from one—you think to yourself: wow, I’m seeing this person for the first time.

What Happens to Narcissists When The Mask Slips

In other words, the mask begins to slip.

Narcissistic personalities like Trump easily gain followers—that’s true in all walks of life, even for everyday influencers. But for a narcissist, the mask must never slip, if they wish to continue to have a hold over their followers. 

Only strategically can the mask slip—exposing calculated vulnerability, for example, to win sympathy, in pitiable moments, a classic ploy.

What should never happen is that the mask begins to slip, and then slips further and further.

When that happens, the relationship between narcissists and followers begins to change. Followers look up to narcissists because narcissists promise something magical: that they have superhuman powers, which they can endow and bestow on them.

But when the mask slips, all this comes undone. The narcissist is revealed as…just another person. Just like the rest of us. Not superhuman. No superpowers. Just a limited, fragile human being. Hey, why are they getting so mad? Why didn’t they get their way in the first place? Look—they couldn’t bend this situation and everyone in it to their will. 

Maybe they’re not super-people, after all.

And as that realization dawns, the demagogue’s spell begins to lift. This has happened throughout history, only often too late. Think of Hitler in the last year of the war. Think of any number of demagogues in their latter years, revealed to be all too human.

Today, what this vicious spiral means, the one that we can all see Trump’s trapped in, is that his spell is finally breaking.

Escalation, Narcissistic Injury, and Impotent Rage, or How Demagoguery’s Spell Breaks

Lashing out in impotent rage. We’ve all done it. And it’s all too human. But not like personalities of this sort do—relentlessly, violently, escalating.

The difference for an extreme narcissist is that the outsized, perpetual rage must never be impotent. Those who have caused the narcissistic injury must be punished—and more, shown to be punished. They must be made examples of, in order to prove the narcissist’s superpowers to their followers, and keep the spell of magical thinking alive.

But when rage turns impotent, then a demagogue is in real trouble.

In Trump’s case, as so often, personalities like this respond by escalating. 

Escalation, though, while it might work on the inner circle, which is used to showing absolute fealty, doesn’t work nearly as well in the real world. It’s more likely to fail, unless you actually are a dictator, because of course the more extreme the demands get, the less likely they are to be obeyed to the letter.

In this case, did Trump and his team really think the Army would back them? You see what I mean.

Impotent rage is something that’s unforgivable in a demagogue. That’s the second part of the vicious cycle. The more it erupts, the more followers shake their heads, and see clearly for the first time. And the more that people who aren’t followers begin to laugh and point—hey, look at this clown—all of which…reinforces the vicious cycle, causing…

Even more narcissist injury.

So let me break all that down now, the vicious cycle.

Narcissistic injury leads to impotent rage. Impotent rage breaks the bond between narcissist and followers. While it ends up making the rest of us laugh in delight, or maybe frown in contempt, like at the disgraceful events at Arlington Cemetery. That causes even more narcissistic injury, which leads to more impotent rage

…And so on.

That’s the vicious spiral Trump’s trapped in. A wiser, more mature personality might take a moment to recognize it. But I think we can all rest safe in the assurance that that ain’t gonna happen.

So sit back, make some popcorn, and prepare yourself. The next few weeks, I’d guess, are going to be nothing but this vicious cycle of meltdown, accelerating every day, straight into…oblivion. We should be so lucky, you’re probably saying.

Hey, is that Trump melting down…again?

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