The narcissist’s agenda is to dictate the thoughts, manipulate the feelings, and control the behavior of their target and everyone in their realm.
As I am writing this, masking politics is in the news, again. A federal judge struck down the claim that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has the authority to mandate masking on public transport. Within hours, most airlines abandoned their masking rules while some state authorities announced that states and municipalities do have authority to mandate masking on public transport in their jurisdiction. A couple of days later, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was going to appeal the federal ruling for the purpose of protecting the police powers of the CDC in the future. This apparently was done at the request of the Biden White House.
In the meantime, social media is abuzz with people virtue signaling that they will continue to wear masks because they:
Believe in science
Want to protect their community.
The news media is stoking the righteous indignation of the mask-wearing public with negative press for the court and continued lionization of pro-mask authorities with political power. Of course, the media includes the compulsory denigration of any scientific, medical, or legal authority who says that general of masking the public has no scientific merit and causes considerable harm.
However, I think this recent comment from an epidemiologist is more worthy of consideration than most of the media click-bait:
“A mask mandate with as many exceptions as the airline mandate is like a submarine that closes three of its five doors.” - Michael T. Osterholm PhD, MPH, quoted in “Maskless Flying” by David Leonhardt, NYTimes April 22, 2022
Indeed, none of the public masking regulations make any sense, i.e. patrons must wear a surgical or cloth mask while walking through a restaurant but not while eating, and young children must wear masks while playing inside and outside but not while napping on their cots.
What is lost in all of this are the two main points: 1) whether or not public masking is safe and effective, although the preponderance of evidence suggests it is ineffective and harmful, and 2) whether or not the CDC has the authority to issue diktats like masking. The federal judge said the CDC does not have that authority.
For the scientific and legal questions, I refer you to the wealth of information available through the Brownstone Institute and Children’s Health Defense. The research and publications by clinical epidemiologist Paul Elias Alexander on masking are particularly good.
For the social science implications relevant to narcissism, allow me to expound on the following:
Narcissism
Narcissists and other antagonistic personalities are incapable of seeing any perspective other than their own. Their paranoid world-view is psychopathological, and they are at the center of that tumultuous world. People with narcissistic traits are drawn to power, but their need for power is insatiable. The stated purpose of the DOJ attempt to overturn the federal ruling (an attempt orchestrated by the Biden White House with the CDC) is focused on increasing CDC power for the future control of the population. This scenario couldn’t be any more text-book narcissistic.
We see elements of:
Triangulation and flying monkeys (pulling other parties into the fray)
Confabulation (making up things to fill inconvenient gaps in the narrative)
Future-faking and cognitive distortion (constructing dystopian future scenarios in order to emotionally bully a change in the present).
Most of all, the actions of the DOJ, WH and CDC are a display of narcissistic rage. As is typical, the dysregulated emotional response to a federal judge ending a mandate two weeks before it was due to end anyway, a mandate that the CDC had extended without justification while it was considering next actions, is a word-salad of logical fallacies. The complaint is a textbook example of nursing a narcissistic injury, i.e. how dare a court tell the CDC or WH that what they might want to do in the future is illegal.
So, the dutiful flying monkeys in these narcissistic organizations headed by insatiable narcissistic power mongers pull out their trunk full of logical fallacies. In so doing, they heap, yet again, unnecessary emotional turmoil directly on the American public and indirectly on the entire world.
Logical Fallacies in the Age of Covid - Mask Edition 1
Framing Fallacy: Masking the public is a necessary intervention that protects health without any negative impact on health or psyche.
Masking is ineffective against respiratory viruses, fear-inducing, and causes bacterial infections. Moreover, it doesn’t work on the population level. Properly fitted high-quality N95 masks worn in 100% compliance by medical personnel in controlled environments provides some small benefit, but is unrealistic for the public.
Argument from Authority: The CDC knows best. We should all follow them.
Neither the CDC nor any other authority or even “consensus” opinion is science. Nor is the CDC a regulatory agency.
The CDC first argued against masking, then encouraged surgical masks or multi-tier cloth masks, then double masks, then N95 masks. Reports from the WHO, Cochrane Collaborative, Johns Hopkins, and others prior to and subsequent to the COVID-19 pandemic argued that there was little to no evidence that masking provided the public any benefit, except maybe to scare people into isolating themselves.
An Appeal to Fear: Covid is a major threat to your health and the welfare of your family, but you can prevent it if you follow instructions, i.e. masking according to the current recommendations.
The risk to young and healthy people from this virus is between practically non-existent to one in ten-thousand. Yes, older people are at higher risk and many have died, but even they don’t have a much different risk profile than they do from influenza and pneumonia which are major causes of elderly death globally and historically. The early Covid deaths were largely due to medical mismanagement. The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) written by well-respected epidemiologists and signed by thousands of professionals emphasized “focused protection” for the most vulnerable and warned against a negative impact on health from lock-downs. They nailed it. Those GBD recommendations were consistent with accepted public health policy prior to Covid, and are being somewhat adopted piecemeal by governments, mostly after the disastrous impact on populations and economies from the lock-down and masking mandates.
People in government even said that they made many of their recommendations because they thought it would make people feel more in control or be more compliant. Really? Authorities terrified people who were not at risk because they thought it a good thing? (“A Plague Upon Our House” by Scott Atlas, 2022)
We have excellent therapeutics, albeit inconsistently used and consistently debated, but that’s a story for another day. (See CDC Guide and FLCCC Alliance Protocol)
Scapegoating: People who do not mask (or vaccinate) are prolonging the pandemic and threatening the health of everyone around them. We blame them!
No, simply, no. Despite the initial claims, neither the mask nor the Covid vaccine prevent transmission of the virus or any of its variants.
Witches were burned at the stake, Jews were forced to wear yellow stars, and and Japanese-Americans were interred based on socially acceptable scapegoating. Human nature hasn’t changed.
Ad hominem, Scoffing and Poisoning the Well: Don’t pay attention to anything from that person or source. They are cranks promoting fringe theories.
What a handy way to encourage ignorance and discourage critical thinking. This is hardly the scientific method.
Magic Words and Science Abuse: I’m smart and educated. I believe in science which has proved masks prevent Covid infection.
Science is not about belief. Religion is about belief. Smart people can have different opinions on any number of scientific and religious concepts.
Scientists construct models based on observations of data. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. Regardless, scientific theories are always changing and require robust discussion and challenges in order to evolve into better representation of truth.
Confirmation Bias or Default Bias: We trust things that are familiar to us. We don’t need to look at anything else. We know what we know. I haven’t been sick since I’ve been wearing a mask, so it must work. I like my mask. I feel safer with it.
People do things for emotional reasons, then find the data to support their decisions. It may feel good, but there is nothing rational or logical about bias. No one is exempt from bias.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
Circular Reasoning: Something is better than nothing. I will be safe if I and everyone else masks, even if some people wear them wrong or I have to take it off to eat, because masks save lives.
Respiratory viruses like Covid that are spread through breath aren’t going to be stopped by imperfect masks or inconsistently worn masks.
“Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” - from “1984” by George Orwell
Blind Loyalty or Favoritism: The people I associate with believe in masking. I’m one of them, so I’ll go along with my team because we are smart.
This is the problem with partisan politics in any organization. Following the leader has led many to their ruin. However, there is power in numbers, so there is pressure from above and below to ensure loyalty to policies for the “good of the team.”
Tribal loyalty is consistent with personality cults and collective narcissism.
Lying with statistics: The CDC and CNN says the numbers prove a benefit. I don’t really know them or understand them, but they do.
Any possible benefit, even from N95 masks, is very small in absolute numbers, but when represented in various statistical manners in very controlled parameters, it can seem big
Initially, about 85% of those who contracted the virus were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms. As the virus has mutated, it’s become more infectious but less harmful. So most people just aren’t going to get sick. However, if you look at populations of people who did get very sick (about 1% and mostly elderly or with co-morbidities), those numbers can be manipulated to look like there is a big benefit.
Any study is vulnerable to statistical manipulation. Media reports that present numbers in a variety of ways that make it impossible to compare like to like are particularly suspect, but most people don’t understand what is being done.
Strawman Argument, False Analogy or Moving the Goalpost: A conversation about masks often finds someone misrepresenting the other side, using an analogy about seatbelts or ranting about the unvaxxed population being the reason why we have to wear masks.
There is plenty to disagree about without confusing the conversation.
The risk:benefit analysis doesn’t compute when there is so much evidence that masks offer small if any protection against Covid infection, but can cause considerable harm due to bacterial contamination, lack of oxygen, and social anxiety.
The legality of mask mandates is separate from the scientific issue, as are the ethics of masking. However, both the legality and ethics should be predicated on a confirmed favorable risk:benefit analysis.
The impact of masking is not the equivalent of wearing a seatbelt, the enforcement of which does not involve shaming, eviction from your car, or the loss of a license.
Big Lie Technique: Everyone is saying masking and vaccines work. Why would doctors and politicians lie to us? Why would government advocate for something that doesn’t work?
Say something over and over and people will believe it, often even the person telling the lie who doesn’t want to admit a mistake or who has a stake in maintaining the illusion of benefit, i.e. prestige and profit.
This is nothing more than brainwashing and hypnotism. Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true, but it can intimidate opponents into a spiral of silence.
Read “1984” by George Orwell.
It occurs to me that the whole masking debate around Covid is a particularly ironic situation because narcissists are known for masking their true identities, their malevolent false-self. Invariably, that mask slips. The question before us is: how many of us are willing to recognize the devil lurking behind the mask at the beginning of this third year in The Age of Covid?
Dance with the Devil: Love in the Age of Covid by Maggie Russo, Atmosphere Press. Feb. 27, 2022.
I suggest the following social science analysis of the coordination between public health officials with media regarding the vaccination policy also applies to masking. The authors identify several of the logical fallacies surrounding national attempts to encourage compliance with policy:
Gesser-Edelsburg A, Hijazi R and Cohen R (2022) It Takes Two to Tango: How the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign in Israel Was Framed by the Health Ministry vs. the Television News. Front. Public Health.
Maggie, is there a way to write or speak with you that's more private than substack comments? I so appreciate what you bring to this ... So important that this authoritarian covid "response" is seen through the lenses of narcissism and psychopathy ... Maybe the primary architects and ultimate energy force operating is that of a predator who cannot Ever get enough control, and metastasizes in malignant power grabs. Those fluent in understanding the operating system of psychopaths / predators / sociopaths are vital to this understanding, with a duty to warn. Some of them were warning about Trump, who, at worst, is less of a predator than what we really need to stop.
But the system, of enabling and gaslighting and flying monkeys and moving goalposts and being both not-actually-psychotic And in-an-alternate-reality that many Truly Believe .. where the scapegoats deserve the blame and the trusted ones can do no wrong, and there is almost like an artificial intelligence type of reflexive dismissal ... that many (not all) who do it are not even aware of ... That's exactly what everyone who talks about narcissistic abuse understands so well ... But mostly - or only applies to personal relationships ... and those fluent in understanding narcissism are vital to this understanding ... Thank you ...
If these US amendments to the WHO Pandemic Treaty pass, it will be like the fantasies of the most predatory abusers manifesting as global policy ...
And they hide in language of protection .. that doesn't even sound that bad if not aware of how vague language will be abused, and the predatory, dishonest mechanisms it's made of ...