Compliancy Continuum
Submissive or Sadistic
PROLOGUE:
Psychobabble about co-dependency never suited me. It seemed like a simplistic ploy to blame the victim, invalidate personal experience, and, frankly, establish another hierarchy of dominance over the “other.” Although I didn’t have the language to explain narcissism then, the co-dependency model which cast people as passively complicit in their abuse felt manipulative and predatory. It put me in mind of the famous quote from Voltaire which is so very applicable to the world we are currently living in:
“Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.” — Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (1760)
That the sanctioned narrative about the Covid virus, pandemic mitigation measures, and value of vaccines continues to dominate the media despite the evidence before our eyes regarding excess deaths, excess disabilities, high absenteeism, and chronic illness post vaccine- a pattern which began in mid 2021- puts me in mind of co-dependency. People cling to their heroes, be they Tony Fauci, Joe Biden or Donald Trump regardless of the evidence against them. Many ordinary people protect these dishonest hero-abusers and burrow into distorted world views just like those who have been labeled “co-dependents” in abusive dyads.
However, there is nothing co-dependent about the censorship and overt attacks on truth-tellers from Dr. Robert Malone to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and from Sen. Ron Johnson to Del Bigtree. This is most decidedly predatory and crosses ideological and scientific/academic boundaries. It also crosses international boundaries as a witness in the Round Table discussion in Washington so succinctly testified on February 27, 2024: that decisions in Washington, DC affect every country in the world. Since most of us didn’t hear about this event which was not covered by any MSM, I’m including a link to this four hour hearing here:
That the mainstream media feeds us daily updates on Trump’s legal woes and ignores not only Congressional hearings, but also major lawsuits like the Fluoride Trial (focusing on neonatal brain damage caused by fluoridation policy) and Murthy v. Missouri (which focuses on unConstitutional acts by the Biden White House), both of which affects every single American, is beyond the pale.
Heck, would any of us on either the liberal or conservative side of the aisle have predicted that the mega-popular FOX journalist Tucker Carlson and CNN journalist Don Lemon would be shown the door in 2023 because they ventured off script? Ditto for CBS mega-star, Sharyl Attkisson, who separated from CBS in 2014 over troubling issues concerning lack of investigative reporting, vaccine science transparency and government interference. I posit that a co-dependent or submissive-sadistic continuum is why we don’t hear about these important events.
SUBMISSIVE to SADISTIC:
It bears repeating that narcissistic characteristics (grandiosity, entitlement, dysregulated emotion, confabulation, warped worldview, etc.) underlie all the antagonistic Cluster B personality disorders. Previously, I wrote about an empathy continuum in order to differentiate between healthy confidence and psychopathy. I also wrote about the the Dark Tetrad model that expands on the Dark Triad model by adding the Sadistic Personality to the Narcissistic, Psychopathic and Machiavellian personalities.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about sadism and submissiveness and how those characteristics fit in with tribal affiliations and hierarchical structures that sacrifice non-compliant members rather than modify world views.
We’ve all recognized submissiveness in the GOP and DNC parties, although some of us only openly recognize it in one or the other of those parties. We understand that blind loyalty to party is what led to the punishment of outliers like GOP Sen. Mitt Romney and Rep. Liz Cheney. Despite being economically and socially progressive, DNC Rep. Tulsi Gabbard ultimately left the DNC in 2022 over disagreements with the “woke” DNC platform.
It occurs to me that tribal loyalty is nothing more than submissiveness to leadership. We all know that the power of leadership is a corrupting influence. It is my opinion that we should acknowledge that when we admire “strong leadership,” we assume a submissive role and provide narcissistic supply to personalities with sadistic tendencies. In other words, compliance enables the emergence of sadism.
Moreover, because of our submissive role, many of us become more likely to “fluff” and “fawn” over our sadistic leaders in an instinctual effort to protect ourselves from being punished or cast out of our tribe because being shunned is psychological death.
Several of my closest girlfriends with whom I’ve maintained relationships for fifty plus years are still boosting. I’ve had to stop trying to talk to them because they want to believe and if I continue to contradict them with contrary evidence, it will utterly destroy our relationships. Given they’ve each had at least half-dozen shots, they all have chronic health issues, and one has developed a heart issue, it seems useless anyway. They are deeply in denial and in the “senior citizen” demographic. We all know our days are numbered, although I for one (the healthiest one) realize I have the potential to live into my 90s like several of my aunts and cousins.
My friends are “good girls” - agreeable and compliant, as I once was. They do what their doctors tell them to do. I’ve had a more difficult life than they, and have been betrayed by the medical establishment several times. Consequently, I am not so submissive to hierarchy.
WHY ARE WE SUBMISSIVE?
Compliance, or being submissive to authority, makes organizations run more smoothly. Another friend has a daughter currently in Secret Service training. Because one recruit was 5 minutes late for a 5 AM start, the entire class had extra push-ups and a longer day, consistent with military training. Some may call this discipline, but I have to ask:
Q: What are we really teaching people?
A: Follow the rules or you will be punished and disliked by your team mates. You may even be expelled from the group, and if you are not expelled, you might not be able to trust your team mates to have your back.
Military structures value obedience more than “critical thinking” in the heat of battle. Most academic institutions have also adopted that mindset in order to garner funding. But when it comes to normal society, the entire “war on Covid” and “we’re all in this together” mentality is a warped and confabulated worldview.
Two reactions to surges of adrenaline from fear-fueled narratives in those trapped in a situation with no “fight or flight” options are:
Fawn: When you know your life (or livelihood) depends on appeasing your abuser, you kiss their a**. You absolutely say or do what you need to in order to survive.
Fluff: If you just want to have a no-drama existence, you make the appropriate noises. You do and say what is least confrontational to your “tribe.”1
My girl friends are fluffers. They don’t want to think about difficult topics, they want to believe the magic potion narrative, and they want to have as non-eventful a life as possible.
The MSM, politicians, and academics know their livelihoods are on the line. They have to aggressively support the sanctioned narrative with their agendas. That is where we see the transition between submissive compliance and sadistic enforcement.
It is my opinion that our general good natures are being manipulated by narcissistic and sadistic personalities, including both the presumptive DNC and GOP presidential candidates as well as by the public health establishment and their “private partners” who include the military industrialists and Big Pharma who have captured our regulatory agencies with lobbying efforts as well as the mainstream media with sponsorships.
Yes, we can talk about polarization and living in a post-fact society. We can even talk about psychological warfare and “mass formation” as explained by Mattias Desmet. It is all true, but I see another layer.
As a result of this pervasive messaging from those in leadership roles, our personalities are being forced into adopting submissive-to-sadistic behavior as a survival mechanism, when in fact non-compliant critical thinking is the only way out of this damaging dynamic.
Maggie Russo is the author of “Dance with the Devil: Love in the Age of Covid”
END NOTE 19 FROM DANCE WITH THE DEVIL: Modern analysis of the adrenaline response adds flock and freeze to the traditional fight or flight responses, as sometimes people freeze in fear while other times they huddle with others for protection. Bill employed all four options, freezing like a statue and seeking support from his friends on the phone as well as engaging in adrenaline-fueled fight and flight behaviors.
Fawning, a term coined by therapist Peter Walker in 2013, is another adrenaline-fueled survival response that is seen in victims who attempt to appease their abusers in order to survive dangerous situations. Fluffing is a more intentional attempt to placate an antagonistic personality through strategic use of flattery. Both fawning and fluffing are consistent with providing narcissistic supply in order to avoid abuse or placate rage.
Maggie -- there's pretty good evidence now that submissiveness, acquiescence, compliance, passiveness, etc., are all just metabolically-created animal behaviors, behaviors that -- to use an old wokey/PC catch word -- 'enable' the sociopaths, narcissists, Machiavellians, and psychopaths among us the freedom to do their thing. For example, anxious rats with malfunctioning mitochondria automatically and consistently defer, show the belly, to other rats (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438822001696). Dietary or pharmaceutical improvement of rat mitochondrial health, however, stops this passive/submissive behavior.
A big thing going on now in individual clinical psychiatry, apparently, is very successfully and rapidly decreasing, if not erasing, previously intransigent mental problems like anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder by getting the sufferers to adopt a ketogenic/low carb diet. See Georgia Ede's 2024 book, "Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind" or Christopher Palmers' 2022 "Brain Energy" for much more explanation.
All of which suggests a hypothesis potentially explaining humanity's chronic infection with dimwitted and/or malevolent 'leaders' and largely passive and submissive citizenry. If anxiety-inducing carbohydrate-rich diets are sufficient to get people to generally and reflexively defer to 'authority', you would expect the archeological record to show an increase in the operation of social dominance arrangements (and violence) among people once grain-, legume-, and grain-producing agriculture became common after the last ice age. In fact, this is the case. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374555958_Violence_trends_in_the_ancient_Middle_East_between_12000_and_400_bce/figures for a notable illustrated example. The First Agricultural Revolution -- and the first great spurt in humanity's carb-eating binge -- took place in this region of the world between the Neolithic/Mesolithic and the Chalcolithic archeological periods.
The apparent moral of the story -- our original ancestral low-carb diet metabollically immunized us against our developments like our current clown world. Time for a factory reset.
I watched "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" last night. The Malfoy house elf, Dobby, hurt himself whenever he perceived himself doing something "wrong" - ironing his hands, pounding his head, etc. Dobby was used, misused and abused by his narcissistic/sadistic master.
Yes, this is a children's fantasy, but it is a chillingly accurate representation of the confused thought patterns and behaviors of victims of domestic violence or anyone suffering from C-PTSD as the result of narcissistic abuse.
In the fantasy, Dobby knew right from wrong and tried to do the right thing even when it would be perceived as wrong. He needed to be freed by a simple ritual, and was in the "happily ever after" ending. It's not so easy for the rest of us, but the message to children is that you can escape abuse, and that is an important message.