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Hermanas Mirabal, aka Las Mariposas 

Why has malignant narcissism struck so many leaders?

I have been interested in narcissism since the Marine Corps assigned me for a short time in 1956 to the Dominican Republic and the capital city Ciudad Trujillo.

The city was really Santo Demingo, but it had been renamed by Rafael Trujillo, dictator from 1930 to when he was assassinated in 1961.

Rafael "El Benefactor" Trujillo, another weak strongman dictator like the current dope sharting in the chair tucked into the Resolute Desk.

He was often called “El Benefactor” by the people because he had absolute political control. He had been trained by U.S. Marines, became commander-in-chief of the army by 1927, and seized power in a 1930 coup and rigged election. (Where have we heard that before?) 

Marines had occupied the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. 

He developed a pervasive cult of personality, committed human rights abuses. His picture, big and small, was inside and outside. Every public and private building home had to have his picture in a prominent place.

His slogan was repeated constantly on radio: “Dios y Trujillo” (God and Trujillo). Streets were renamed after him.

I attended Mardi Gras functions and watched his daughter lead a big parade as Princess!

He renamed the highest mountain peak Pico Duarte to Pico Trujillo. He allowed only one political party, and all government employees had to donate 10% of their salaries to his party.

In 1937 he ordered the mass killing of an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians, his neighbors, living on or near the border.

He ran a cruel and brutal secret police force called the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) to control any opposition to his regime. He used torture, murder and the famous South American “disappearances” control the country. Members of the middle class left the country.

No doubt he had a severe case of malignant narcissism.

The murder of the beautiful and courageous butterflies

Trujillo was finally done in by three “Butterflies.” Trujillo, like Jeffrey Epstein, was always looking for sex and a new mistress. At a dance, Trujillo made sexual advances toward one of three sisters, when Minerva slapped him. After that incident, she was briefly jailed and her father was imprisoned for two years.

Minerva and two sisters, Patria and Teresa, formed an opposition party called the 14th Of June Movement to get even.

The Catholic Church supported Trujillo for many years but it finally condemned his policies in 1960. 
In 1960 the three “Butterflies” were, returning on a high road after visiting their husbands in prison and had an “accident.”

Trujillo’s thugs suffocated the driver and the sisters. Their car supposedly went off a curve and fell 150 feet, killing all three. It was one of many “disappearances” in Latin and South America.

The women became national heroes. The deaths of the three sisters by “accident” became a symbol of courage, dignity and strength in the entire country that led to Trujillo’s assassination six months later in 1961. He was killed by suffocation by dissidents supporting the Butterflies when Trujillo was driving to see his mistress.

November 25, 1960, the day the Mirabel sisters were killed in a mountain ambush, is observed in many Latin American countries as the International Violence Against Women in memory of Patria, Minerva and Teresa. In 2000 the United Nations named it an International Day for the Elimination Against Women.

Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump are victims of narcissism

Before I present evidence that Murdoch and Trump are in Stage Four Malignant Narcissism, I will list symptoms and characteristics of the “I Love Only Me” disease.

It’s a collection from psychologists and psychiatrists who have spent lifetimes treating what many of them call the “hardest-to-treat” mental disease (from many sources):

• A narcissist’s grandiosity is not confidence. It is a brittle defense, an overcompensation for fragile self-esteem shaped by early experience of emotional neglect and misattunement. That history can leave a person deeply shamed and dependent on external affirmation, intoxicated by praise and hypersensitive to criticism. With characteristic emotional volatility and impaired empathy, meaningful, reciprocal relationships are out of reach for narcissists.

• It isn’t only people with low self-esteem who are vulnerable to narcissists. In uncertain times, many of us feel vulnerable and reach for leaders who project omnipotence, the potency we wish we had. Narcissists excel at appearing that way. If we want different leaders, we must stop mistaking defensive grandiosity for genuine strength.

• Narcissists do not rise in a vacuum. They rise in systems under strain. When uncertainty becomes chronic – economic insecurity, relentless pace, blurred boundaries, constant performance signaling – organizations and societies become inflamed. In that state, confidence gets mistaken for competence, dominance for direction and certainty for safety.

• We don’t favor narcissists, we select them because, in biology, inflammation narrows perception and favors short-term survival over long-term judgment. We all want to live longer if we like life.  The same dynamic plays out in workplaces, markets, classrooms and politics.

• The well-educated are less likely to support narcissists. In the 2024 election 61 percent of men without a college degree voted for Donald Trump, versus 48 percent for college graduates. For women, 45 percent without a degree voted for Trump, versus 37 percent of graduates.

Those who critically think and remember the history of previous narcissists are aware of the damage these self-centered individuals can do and are less likely to vote for them. It is no accident that Trump attacked universities as soon as he started his second term. Lack of historical knowledge is anathema to democracy.

• A study by therapists and lawyers found that malignant narcissistic world leaders gained power with what is called “fantasy crisis triad”: a terrible (fantasy) crisis, an evil (fantasy) villain; and assuming the role of a (fantasy) hero. Then these narcissistic leaders adopted fantasy policies of their own, based on no research and without consulting advisers. (Wow!)

Examples of “fantasy” policies include pursuing genocide of an entire country (Israel), starving peasants (like Sudan and Somalia), starting cultural revolutions (Venezuela), invading neighboring countries (Russia), and eliminating countries (United States).

• If given the opportunity, women can also be vicious and cruel malignant narcissists. Think Kristi Noem. Not only did she shoot her “dumb” puppy and goat, she strolled down a prison hall between hundreds of men locked up in side cells and left to die in a white clinging T-shirt and a $60,000 Rolex on a wrist.

A female malignant narcissist also has an inflated sense of superiority and a huge sense of entitlement. We see cruelty and an absence of morality and empathy One of the ways malignant narcissists control and dominate others is through being cruel. They’re cruel for fun. They blend personality traits which include callousness, aggressiveness, a lack of remorse and sadism. If she meets a potential partner, she becomes Minnesota nice to learn all of his vulnerabilities so she can dominate him later.

A big battle between two malignant narcissists
When Donald Trump blessed the Divided States of America with his State of the Union speech of 107 minutes, he probably spoke close to 160,000 words. The average person speaks about 125-150 words per minute and inserts about 20 of them in an average sentence which might express one thought, idea, truth, tantrum or lie.

In the case of the malignant narcissist Trump and his previous record of telling falsehoods, he most likely spouted  about 8,000 lies in the speech.

His two most historically famous are “Only I can do it” and “I am a real smart guy.” Among thousands of lies reviewed by doctors and journalists, many refer to his major policy positions.

• Race: “I don’t have a racist bone in my body! I have a great relationship with Blacks. I have always had a great relationship with Blacks.”

• Women: “I cherish women. I want to help women. I’m going to be able to do things for women that no other candidate would be able to do. Oftentimes when I’m sleeping with one of the top women in the world I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, ‘Can you believe what I am getting?’”

• Climate Change: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.”

• Business: “I know what sells and I know what people want.”

• Intelligence: “I’m intelligent. Some people would say I’m very, very, very intelligent.” A critic said he was an empty vessel waiting to be filled with other people’s bad ideas.

• Reporters: “Maggot Hagerman, just another SLEAZEBAG writer for The Failing New York Times, insists on writing false stories about me, even though she fully knows and understands that the exact opposite of anything she says is usually the truth.”

Rupert Murdoch’s father Sir Keith Murdoch was the son of a Scottish clergyman, became a malignant narcissist on London’s Fleet Street where newspapers in the world started in the 17th century.

St. Bride’s Church just off an alley became the journalist’s church. Reporters selling their “penny” one-page news would often seek safety from irate readers or rain or snow storms.

His son Rupert inherited the gene of narcissism from his father Keith, revealing it early by getting caught cheating by his teenage kids in the game of Monopoly. He always wanted Boardwalk instead of Baltic Avenue.

The smart literate narcissist Murdoch, who added The New York Post to his Australian broadcast empire in 1974, has known dumb illiterate narcissist Trump for half a century.

In my view they have “loved” and “hated” each other and have helped each other become billionaires.
Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal to tell truths to gain respectability. He told people he wanted to make Trump a “non-person.” He “hated” him. He constantly attacked Trump for being stupid so his own malignant narcissistic anchors and commentators could spend many hours of the day and night talking about what Trump was doing to the nation and the world.

Trump loves the idea of being the center of news 24/7. Trump has made Murdoch billions by having him dominate the news by lying on Fox News on TV and radio while Trump is making billions dominating the news cycle and illegal grifting from the White House Mall.

No doubt malignant narcissists have been created by Homo sapiens for thousands of years. Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote about these men and women in The Prince in 1513.

Scholar Garrett Mattingly writes: “The Prince lays down as a major premise that men in general are selfish, treacherous, cowardly, and, above all, gullible and stupid. It therefore advises a prince, and particularly a new prince who hopes to destroy the liberties of those he rules, to employ hypocrisy, cruelty, and deceit, to make himself feared even at the risk of making  himself hated, to divide the people and destroy their natural leaders, and keep faith with no one, since no one will keep faith with him. It views the world of politics as a jungle in which moral laws and standards of ethical are merely snares for fools, a jungle in which there is no reality but power, and power is the reward of ruthlessness, ferocity and cunning.”

Our constitution is being shredded by princes and princesses.