Rep. Cory Mills malicious malevolent tweet about Pelosi's husband shows why we need Twitter
Today's blog is a twofer. I address both the malignant narcissism on the far-right and why Twitter is, like it or not, a necessary town square.
by Hal Brown, MSW
Read HUFFPOST article here.
I wish it wasn't so. I wish it was possible to dismiss the benefits of Twitter out of hand. I hate the fact that because so many newsworthy tweets are on Twitter Elon Musk is able to make money off the platform.
President Biden has 36.8 million followers there:
It isn't like it or not, I don't like it at all, but Twitter has become the national (and international) town square. We can try to live in fantasy land about Twitter just going away. Case in point, read the HUFFPOST article and see how tweets are used. Consider what this dirtbag would have gotten away with without Rep Swalwell posting on Twitter .
There's nothing to say about this despicable new member of the GOP contingent of the House that isn't in the HuffPost article except for me to add my perspective as a retired psychotherapist who has written a lot about a particular psychological personality type.
Brought into the public awareness by the founder of the Duty to Warn group Dr. John D. Gartner malignant narcissism was a conceptualization several psychopathologies described by noted social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1964.
Malignant narcissism is an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Fromm described it as a "severe mental sickness" representing "the quintessence of evil". He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity. Wikipedia
From Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Tucker Carlson to a witches' brew of actors on the public stage like Putin and the two Steves, Bannon and Miller, those who love democracy, not only in America but in Ukraine and elsewhere, are suffering because malignant narcissists wield power.
Back to Twitter and the story on HUFFPOST. You can see just from this one example how Twitter functioned as a worthwhile town square.
Cory Mills, in his malignant narcissism, was unable to resist making a tweet which sent a message to hard-core extremists and showed his true colors. When it proved to be against his own best interests he deleted it but it was too late since like with many similar tweets it had already been noticed and copied. In this case we can thank Rep. Eric Swalwell:
His tweet generated the dozen replies which augment the HUFFPOST article. None of them are notables. They are from ordinary people with Twitter names like Jack-O'Lantern and booklady2002.
Just as the open mic*, sharp-eyed photographer, or accidental video can catch someone whose impulses outweighed their good judgement, the ease of making a tweet without considering the negative consequences can reveal one's true character and beliefs.
Consider the recent example of a CSPAN camera catching liar Rep. George Santos making what appears to be a white power symbol.
C-SPAN video of the incident shows that Santos had pre-positioned his hand along his body in an unusual way to create the gesture.
Far-right extremists, mainly white supremacists, have coopted the gesture to symbolize a “W” and “P” for white power, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The Southern Poverty Law Center also categorizes the gesture as a white power gesture but explains that on the right, the gesture is often used to troll liberals. YahooNews
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