Understanding the sadistic bullies in the GOP

 By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

Bullies may or may not be literally sick in the medical or psychiatric sense. However, some of them could be diagnosed as what is now called (in the diagnostic manual or DSM) anti-social personality but best understood by the public as being sociopaths even though they only have some of these characteristics:

Consider any politician or personality and click off how many of these traits they exhibit:

• Not following social norms, usually shown by constant law-breaking
• Continuous lying for your personal gain
• Impulsive behavior
• High amounts of physical aggression, sometimes getting into fights
• No care for your safety or the safety of others
• Financial or social irresponsibility
• A lack of remorse after physically or emotionally hurting someone

I would broaden these criteria as follows (in red). Ask yourself whether this would change how you assess someone.

• Not following social norms, usually shown by constant law-breaking or defiance of generally accept ed norm of good behavior
• Continuous lying for your personal gain
• Impulsive behavior
• High amounts of physical aggression, sometimes getting into fights or heated arguments
• No care for your safety or the safety of others including making other feel unsafe
• Financial or social irresponsibility the later including in a way someone you'd consider social responsible would act.
• A lack of remorse after physically or emotionally hurting someone (emphasis on causing emotional distress)

Some bullies, Donald Trump being an exemplar, can reasonably be described as not only meeting the criteria for being a malignant narcissistic personalty (also not an "official" diagnosis) but also having sadistic personality disorder.

A sadistic tooth-drawer using a cord to extract a tooth from an angonized patient. Pen drawing after J. Collier, 1773. Iconographic Collections Keywords: John Collie CC by 4.0

This diagnosis was in the 1987 diagnostic manual but removed in subsequent editions because the psychiatrists writing the manual thought it would be used as a defense in criminal trials. Consider the traits listed for this disorder:

According to the DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria Sadistic personality disorder is defined by a pervasive pattern of sadistic and cruel behavior that begins in early adulthood. It was defined by four of the following.

• Has used physical cruelty or violence for the purpose of establishing dominance in a relationship (not merely to achieve some noninterpersonal goal, such as striking someone in order to rob him/her).
• Humiliates or demeans people in the presence of others.
• Has treated or disciplined someone under his/her control unusually harshly.
• Is amused by, or takes pleasure in, the psychological or physical suffering of others (including animals).
• Has lied for the purpose of harming or inflicting pain on others (not merely to achieve some other goal).
• Gets other people to do what he/she wants by frightening them (through intimidation or even terror).
• Restricts the autonomy of people with whom he or she has a close relationship, e.g., will not let spouse leave the house unaccompanied or permit teenage daughter to attend social functions.
• Is fascinated by violence, weapons, injury, or torture.

Theodore Millon, a psychogist, broke down the types of sadistic disorder:

Subtype	Description	Personality traits
Spineless sadism	Including avoidant features	Insecure, bogus, and cowardly; venomous dominance and cruelty is counterphobic; weakness counteracted by group support; public swaggering; selects powerless scapegoats.
Tyrannical sadism	Including negativistic features	Relishes menacing and brutalizing others, forcing them to cower and submit; verbally cutting and scathing, accusatory and destructive; intentionally surly, abusive, inhumane, unmerciful.
Enforcing sadism	Including compulsive features	Hostility sublimated in the "public interest," cops, "bossy" supervisors, deans, judges; possesses the "right" to be pitiless, merciless, coarse, and barbarous; task is to control and punish, to search out rule breakers.
Explosive sadism	Including borderlinefeatures	Unpredictably precipitous outbursts and fury; uncontrollable rage and fearsome attacks; feelings of humiliation are pent-up and discharged; subsequently contrite.

It must be noted that people can have more than one psychiatric diagnosis and that being a sadist can be part of another disorder, for example alcoholism. One can, but not necessarily, need to meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder to be a sadist. 

Everyone understands that a bully is one who is habitually cruel, insulting, or threatening to others who are weaker, smaller, or in some way vulnerable.

Bullies don't always target specific people or groups who are weaker, smaller, or vulnerable. Some just try to bully everyone any figure their aggression will be so broad it will work to intimidate some while others will be able to resist it or fight back.

In some ways it's a race to the top of the list for who is the biggest bully in the GOP. Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis (see 

'Coldblooded' DeSantis buried for 'playing dumb' about Russian slaughter in Ukraine)  vie for the title, but there are runner-ups like, among politicians, Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among celebrities pretending to be pundits Tucker Carlson beats everyone else. They compete for the Ms/Mr. Non-congeniality award.

Not everyone can pull off being a bully. Someone can try and be so bad at it people they attempt to bully don't take them seriously. They may not have the demeanor to elicit fear in those they want to victimize. However, if they have the power to hurt them, for example a work boss, even if they come across as meek, they can be effective bullies.

There are several benefits to being a successful bully. One is that if a person is a sadist they get pleasure from making people suffer. Another is that it helps them achieve their goals. From a personality perspective because many, perhaps most, of these bullies harbor feelings of insecurity, in some cases because they were bullied in childhood, becoming a bully protects them from experiencing these feelings.

Hopefully it is obvious that a person doesn't have to be a MAGA Republican to be a sadistic bully. I am sure there are liberal Democrats who meet the criteria. 

I've read that Katie Porter, who I admire, has been called a bad boss who intimidates her staff, and that Hillary Clinton did the same. The Democrat who was known notoriously to be a bully is LBJ.

I think we have to look at being a perfectionist who is intolerant with those who don't meet high performance expectations but don't take any pleasure in making underlings uncomfortable and compare them with those who relish making them squirm. 

I am hard pressed to think of any Democrats in the public eye who come close to meeting the actual criteria for being sadist personalities.

^^^^^^^^

✪

Quite a contrast: Biden visits Kyiv,, Trump used a Pence visit to blackmail Zelensky

 By Hal Brown

There was a commercial on MSNBC so when I sat down this morning with my cup of coffee I clicked on HUFFPOST to see what their lead story was.

I want to share the third thing I thought about when I read the following:

This was the main page of the BBC website:

I read these articles before I saw the news on MSNBC:

 The first things I thought were a mixture of "good on him" feelings about being proud that the United States had president like him. Next, I thought briefly about how stringent the secrecy and security had to have been. Then, third, I thought about this:

Excerpt:

President Trump repeatedly involved Vice President Pence in efforts to exert pressure on the leader of Ukraine at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to a Democratic rival, current and former U.S. officials said.

Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May — an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar — when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington, the officials said.

The last president to visit a war zone was George W. Bush who visited Iraq in 2003. This was probably a high point in his dismal presidency (see last paragraph here). Biden joins Bush, Lincoln, FDR, Eisenhower, and LBJ on the list of presidents who have visited war zones.

The logistics of the trip are now being reported including the fact the Russia was notified about it in advance:

Excerpt:

The trip that Biden made into Kyiv was “bold” and “risky,” and done after months of planning for a range of security concerns, according to several White House officials.

The logistics were coordinated with a range of different government agencies, which included threat assessments to determine if Biden could safely enter and exit the war-torn country. It was made more challenging, officials said, because there is no U.S. military presence in Ukraine.

“This was a historic visit unprecedented in modern times to have the president of the United States visit the capital of a country at war where the us military doesn’t control the critical infrastructure,” said Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.

There's a video here of an air raid siren going off as Biden and Zelensky visit the historic St. Micahel's Cathedral. I don't think anything in presidential history compares with this.

Watch the video (below) here:

 

. .

.

Watching the President of the United States walk down the line of Ukrainian officials and shake hands with each of them was inspiring enough but then this happened with one of them:

........

Update: I wasn't the only one to think along these lines. This is from David Rothkopf.

Excerpt:

In sending this message, Biden pointedly evoked without mentioning his name yet another American president in a visit to the Eastern edges of Europe: Donald Trump during his 2018 Helsinki meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Biden went to Europe to send Putin a message of American and allied strength. Trump went to grovel before Putin. Biden stood up for American values and our allies. Trump said he trusted Putin more than America’s own intelligence and law enforcement services. Biden embodied America’s strength. Trump illustrated and represented our greatest weakness.

A year after Trump embarrassed the country in Helsinki, he compounded the offense by withholding aid from Ukraine in an attempt to extort Zelensky into doing political dirty work against Biden to help Trump’s reelection efforts. It was an illegal act that ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. At the same time and throughout the following year according to reports from Trump’s own top advisors, he was actively advocating to withdraw American troops from Europe.

There is no doubt that had Trump been re-elected, today we would be witnessing an American president standing alongside his Russian counterpart not Zelensky, marking the weakening of the West, not its enduring strength. Perhaps that prospect, the sense that America was weak and divided and did not care about Ukraine, would not lead the fight to preserve democracy, encouraged Putin to undertake his ill-fated, hugely costly, profoundly ill-considered invasion last February. It seems likely it had an effect leading to that disastrous miscalculation.

Noon update:

From Fox Business:

'Bold move': Fox Business host gushes over Biden's 'game-changer' Ukraine visit

Fox Business host Stuart Varney praised President Joe Biden on Monday for a surprise visit to the war zone in Ukraine.

Varney reacted on his Fox Business program just hours after Biden visited Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. 

"This could be a game-changer," Varney announced. "President Biden makes a surprise visit to Ukraine. It was a very well-kept secret. He took a train from the Polish border to Kyiv. And even as air raid sirens were sounding, he was meeting with President Zelensky. And then, walking the streets in a war zone! Highly symbolic."

........

Unrelated to the visit per se I noted that story was headline news on major media websites like The New York Times ... 

... and even the partisan Fox News had it on the opening page so you didn't have to scroll down to see it...

... but the supposedly nonpartisan CNN website had it so far down the page you had to scroll down twice to see it:

Perhaps this is another sign that under new leadership CNN has moved closer to being like Fox News. Consider: 

The changes at CNN look politically motivated. That should concern us all. By Robert Reich.

This article is more than 5 months old

J6 Committee top investigator lays out a provable case that Trump led a conspiracy to overturn election

 By Hal Brown

The Raw Story summary -

Trump's Jan. 6 conspiracy 'potentially broader' than final House report described: lead investigator

 - of The New York Times article -

Timothy J. Heaphy Led the House Jan. 6 Investigation. Here’s What He Learned.

The top staff investigator for the House inquiry on the Capitol attack opened up about his biggest takeaways and why proving intent is the key to a criminal charge against former President Donald J. Trump.

 - doesn't do it justice (no pun intended).

Unfortunately you have to subscribe to The New York Times to read the revealing and unnerving interview with Timothy J. Heaphy (Wiki profile), the former U.S. attorney who served as the top staff investigator for the Jan. 6th Committee. 

Asked by Luke Broadwater, author of the article (profile), when the J6 Committee realized they would be breaking new ground, Heaphy said it was when the J6 Committee saw how early the multipart plan to stop the transfer of power started to take shape:

The world had seen the violence of the Capitol and how awful it was. But how we got there, and how methodical and intentional it was — this ratcheting up of pressure that ultimately culminates in the president inciting a mob to disrupt the joint session — that was new. 

 Below, the emphasis in red is mine:

When we started to see intentional conduct, specific steps that appear to be designed to disrupt the joint session of Congress, that’s where it starts to sound criminal. The whole key for the special counsel is intent. The more evidence that we saw of the president’s intent, and others working with him, to take steps — without basis in fact or law — to prevent the transfer of power from happening, it started to feel more and more like possible criminal conduct.

Heaphy was asked by Broadwater to address the failures of law enforcement to prevent the attack on the Capitol and the workings of the J6 Committee, which he did, but the meat of interview as far as I am concerned in how former the former president is implicated in being the leader of an illegal conspiracy. This is in scattered almost wlly-nilly through the interview. 

Another excerpt: 

There’s evidence that the specific intent to disrupt the joint session extends beyond President Trump. There is a cast of characters that includes the ones you mentioned (i.e. John Easton and Jefferey Clark). I think you could look at [Rudolph W.] Giuliani, and Mark Meadows. I think that the Justice Department has to look very closely at whether there was an agreement or conspiracy.

As far as I am concerned, the only reason we need to know how far beyond Trump the conspiracy extended, besides bringing the conspirators to justice, is to make an airtight care against the leader of the conspiracy.

There is only one person who must, absolutely must, suffer the consequences for trying to treasonously sabotage our democracy. I don't care whether everyone else goes free, makes a fortune selling tell-all books and getting gigs on Fox News as long as Donald Trump gets one or more fair trials for the felonies there is enough evidence to indict him for having committed.

If he is found innocent because a jury or juries think a case hasn't been made beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed crimes and he walks free, I will have no choice but to deal with my disappointment and anger. I will have to live with my belief, my lack of having a reasonable doubt, that he really did the equivalent of committing a murder on Fifth Avenue and got away with it.

A footnote to history is that Trump is the only president to have said things about getting aways with committing felonies. Another, lest we forget, is "grabbing" line from the Access Hollywood tape. Of course there also are the "perfect" phone calls he made, to Zelensky and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. 

Addendum:

To understand the meaning of reasonable doubt one must grasp that such a finding does not mean that the person being tried is innocent.

Under U.S. law, a defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty. Reasonable doubt stems from insufficient evidence. If it cannot be proved without a doubt that the defendant is guilty, that person should not be convicted. Verdicts do not necessarily reflect the truth, they reflect the evidence presented. A defendant’s actual innocence or guilt may be an abstraction. (Reference)

A moment of snark:

I meant this to be a serious blog but when someone posted a cartoon on another Raw Story article I didn't resist my impulse to make an illustration to go with it.

The sheriff's badge was added to the picture of Lucy. I didn't enlarge Trump's ass though a number of people used photo manipulation to make it even bigger.