The Narcissistic Projection Machine
Narcissists really know only a few tricks. One happens to be projection, and they practice it so much that it becomes second nature. Hence narcissists love to commit character assassination by calling the party they're tearing down (to look better than) the narcissist. Kinda like the French intelligentsia accusing America of being the grandiose one, the narcissist. A joke.
Where is the character assassination coming from? Where is the inflated measure of self importance (grandiosity) coming from? Where is the envy coming from? Where is the grandiosity shamed by needing the other party's help? Where is all the dissing and denigrating coming from? Where is the rage over nothing on a regular basis? Where is the dehumanizing charicature coming from? Who's making all the wild accusations?
That's yer narcissist. Every time. Always a living, breathing Projection Machine. Your first clue? He or she is trashing somebody else.
They just cannot get the difference between true greatness and grandiosity. You can tell them a million times that grandiosity is a gross overestimate of importance and greatness. They always get it exactly backwards and accuse the great one (like the great leader or the great inventor or the great builder or the great nation = America) of being "grandiose". It is too complex an idea for them to comprehend that you are not grandiose because you are important: you are grandiose because you're a piss-ant who thinks they're important.
Never expect narcissists to comprehend that.
And who cares more about their fellow human beings than those who spend their blood and treasure saving them? Those who make a virtue out of looking the other way while dictators mass murder their own people would have us think that sacrificing your blood and treasure for others is the very oppositie of what it is. They characterize it as, of all things, "selfish" and "brutal".
And the punch line is that they characterize their looking the other way as the "humanitarian" behavior. They keep a perfectly straight face while saying this! They call that (of all things) "loving peace."
Enough to make the head spin.
There is just enough room in the skull for the brain to get twisted all the way around backwards and upside down. All you have to do is arrive at your desired conclusion first, and then think backwards to justify it.
People who just think whatever is popular today will swallow it whole without ever noticing how absurd your "reasoning" is.
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The Americans and the French mutually accuse each other of grandiosity. It reminds me of the way my sister projects her extreme irritability onto me. Yes, I am an extremely irritable person at times. Actually the only person in my intimate circle who rivals me in irritability—possibly surpassing it—is? You guessed it, my sister. Projections are not always projected onto the innocent. We probably more readily project onto someone who is at least slightly guilty of what we are projecting…although most certainly not always. It only makes sense. I want to add that I am not the only one who thinks my sister is irritable, far from it, so it’s not simply a case of my projecting my irritability onto her. That said, let it be known that France is far from being the only country who believes The U.S. is grandiose. You should read the Spanish newspapers sometime, their main national newspapers regularly depict the U.S. as grandiose…and there’s no one the Spanish loathe more than those grandiose, arrogant Frenchmen.
No, you are wrong about projection. Normal people might occassionaly project on someone who actually has the character flaw (more by accident than intent), but narcissists always project on someone with the corresponding virtue instead. See the Main Website for why. It's all about looking better than someone else, you see. So that means smearing off on bright spots.
Yes, France is not the only nationalistic country in the world. Virtually all are except the United States, which never has been associated with a breed. It's that "my-kind-is-better-than-your-kind" disease, which Americans can't get. Europe isn't cured of it yet.
Grand France came to the rescue of Lebanon last year with 12 men and a digny. Yet it thinks it should play a leading role on the world stage? Wow, look at what NATO has done in Afghanistan! I'm sorry, but Europe's empires are gone. It cannot dominate the world anymore. But it tries to continue dominating with nothing but hot air now by just constantly ragging at the United States: "We know just how get to you = we will call you evil if you don't mind us!"
So, truth is determined by vote? People don't behave like cattle? There was a time when everyone said slavery was right, that burning people at the stake was right, that Hitler was right. So, you say that just because all the cattle scream that America is narcissistic it's true. Invalid. Substantiate please, with facts and logic.
It would impossible to overestimate the importance of the United States in the world. Most Americans, I think, don't appreciate its importantce. That is the opposite of grandiosity.
You speak of these things as though they are self evident, but give no substance to back up what you say except that all the anti-Americans in the world hate "America" so America must be hateful.
Same thing happens to all the victims of narcissists. It's called "ganging up."
You say that America is "suffering" from self love and ego-centrism. Well, I'm glad we suffer from self love. As for ego-centrism, your "certainly" doesn't cut it. Show me how. I see a lot of American selflessness, in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. One of us must be hallucinating.
You say America has a lot to envy in other nations. Name one thing.
You say "America shows up at the party and begins trumpeting his “we’re the greatest nation in the world” spiel."
You are using the word "America" just like anti-Americans do - as a catch-all term for America, the American government, and the American people. That makes it bigotry.
And where are you getting this? What Americans or American leaders have you ever seen show up at a party and do that? Name an instance. A quote. Any evidence at all. Or are you just parrotting Eurospeak?
You whitewash anti-Americanism as "
the other party-goers raising their eyebrows and giving each other side-ways glances, snickering and shaking their heads." That's minimizing. They call us stupid neanderthals and brute beasts. They cheered 9/11. They blamed the victim for it. They portray us as apes and monsters in their newspaper cartoons. They say we have no culture. They say we are souless. They say we have an evil ulterior motive for everything we do. They say we are violent. The list goes on and on. Like we just stepped out of the Stone Age.
Check your history - Europeans have been saying this (that America and Americans are degenerates) since before the birth of the United States. They were just as loud at it in the 1930s as they are now.
Could it be because we are populated by people who rejected Europe to come here? Hmmm? A little hurt pride, maybe?
American businesspeople can hardly hold business meetings in Europe anymore, because the first fifteen minutes are wasted placating angry Europeans ranting at him or her about America and the American people. Americans in Europe and throughout the world get accosted and spit on daily. Canadians get accosted and when they cry, "Don't attack me, I'm a Canadian," they get sidled up to with talk of what a bunch of stupid pigs their southern neighbors are. Americans get murdered just for being Americans (which is genocide.)
So, don't you think you had better stop measuing one side's sins with end loader and the other side's with a thimble? Europeans won't count you as equal to them for agreeing with them about your countrymen.
And it is mainly the European intelligentsia. They have leftist political reasons for inciting anti-Americanism = anti-capitalism.
And so do anti-American Americans. It's about the next election. Period. When the wrong political party "occupies" the White House, this country stinks, right?
Patriotism is simply fidelity to your neighbor.
It's a virtue, not a vice.
Nationalism is thinking your kind is better than other kinds. To be subtle, instead of bragging about your kind, you tear down that other kind - those Americans.
The American people have their faults, but not one of them is on the list of the things we're accused of. That list is 100% projection.
I love this country. I love its people. Europeans should be saying the same thing about their own country and people. But they aren't. Instead, all they're doing is running down America.
The great European culture that has given so much to the world for so many centuries seems unable to see one good thing in itself anymore. What a shame. What a shame that Americans should see more for Europeans to be proud of than they do.
"Patriotism is simply fidelity to your neighbor.
It's a virtue, not a vice.
Nationalism is thinking your kind is better than other kinds."
Excellent and concise definition of the distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Thanks, Kathy. Language is so often muddled; definitions are shifted around until reality is redefined according to base agendas and bankrupt ideologies. I hate that.
I'm proud to be an American...and glad to have you as a neighbor, Kathy. I appreciate your clear thinking more than I can say. Thank you for demanding proof for accusations and statements that need to be challenged because they are baseless. These accusations are just about never challenged by those in leadership. If America is as she is accused of being, no one could continue to get away with the lies, slander and projection that go on unchecked, unproven, unchallenged every single day. America is accused of being a bully...no bully would sit still for this as we have for centuries now. America's "crimes" increase with the measure of her generosity, patience and benevolence. "No good deed goes unpunished" as they say.
What we europeans (and the rest of the world) mainly see from american culture is through television and the movietheater. I think you can not underestimate this influence enough on the view europeans and other cultures get and how it forms their opinions on americans and american culture.
These days I guess 80% of all programs on television and virtualy every movie comes from America.
Many (evt. most) of these programs and movies advertise a materialistic, individualistic 'succesfull' live-style; the good money, the good looks, being smart, the great carreer, the big car, having power and so on.
In other words; a narcistic superficial livestyle.
Many 'thinking' people are fed-up with this influence. They think also the motivation behind all this productions is not making good programs and movies but sorting as much effect as possible for the biggest profit.
And some cultures even think it's delibraty infiltrating other cultures to sell as much 'american dream' as possible to enslave them in materialism. They feel threatened by it.
It's what europeans see for almost half a century; 'the great American Dream'.
Many people in Europe, America and other country's know now where it leads to; destruction of social structures, polution, extreem extinction of species and most of all general dumpness and confusion of an entire generation.
And the cynical reality of all of this is, that it's not based on real Americans or real American culture!
We donn't know real Americans!
We only know the virtual reality, 'the image' of it.
The image telivision and movies give of you Americans and how live should be lived. And many people hate this image and feel threatened by it.
They donn't hate real Americans cause they donn't know them!
People are people evrywhere. Most of them are just nice and loveble.
So this is the same in America as in Russia forinstance.
We shouldn't argue about that.
My opinion is that a great deal of this 'image'-problem of America is due to the image it sends over the world for so long now.
Start showing more of the real Americans I would say against television- and movie makers.
I'm sure it could help a lot.
greetings, Gerard
Much of what you say is true. And your insight seems atypical, for you realize that what you see on TV isn't real Americans or real American life.
I wish all Europeans realized that! How many Europeans have ever been here? Far fewer, percetagewise, than Americans who have been there (don't forget to count our businesspeople and troops stationed there).
And, I'm sorry, but New England is just that. Most Europeans who do come here never get more than 17 miles inland and see the real America, where we aren't so tight-packed that we're all in lockstep.
You suggest that we collectively shape the image of America that goes out over American TV. This shows that you have no idea how we govern ourselves. We do not govern that sort of thing here. That ain't gonna change.
Nobody else has any say in how we govern ourselves, either.
This European complaint you cite begs the obvious question: If Europeans don't like our media and products, why do you import it? Nobody is forcing you to. It is absurd to blame the seller for what you are buying.
Me? I just RARELY watch TV. (But there are many good things to be found on American television.) People all over the world prefer it to TV produced elsewhere. Why? Because it is shoddy?
Produce something as good yourselves, and you won't have to watch American TV. We really do work hard over here. Sometimes on weekends even. That's not a sin here.
American TV networks sell that stuff to you Europeans because you like it. And you prove that by buying it.
And the accusation that this is some sort of evil Ameriocan plot to subvert the whole world by corrupting other cultures with our own evil culture - well that's just ridiculous!
We don't use our media as tools to shape the collective mind. You Europeans do.
TV is a business. This is a free country. That means business has the right to be as ridiculous as it wants. We don't have a nanny-style government here that controls what goes out over the airwaves for the purpose of social engineering. Even our small Public Broadcasting System makes sure that so little of its funding comes from the government that it can go without that funding if necessary to free itself of government influence or control.
Compare the BBC - monster Auntie Beeb, paid for by a tax on watching TV and broadcasting anti-Americanism in 43 languages around the globe daily. Dwarfing every other free news agency in the world. No need to produce a product that people would willingly purchase. No competition.
Freedom. Freedom of speech. Freedom for commercial ads to be as stupid as the producer wants = stupid enough to sell the product like hotcakes.
That's the way we have it, and that's the way we want it. I dare say that most of us hate what we see on TV too. But we won't head toward totalitarianism by regulating what these business can broadcast. If people have a taste for that sort of thing, that's their issue.
We don't have state-run and state-funded media claiming to operate for altruist purposes (but really just propaganda machines of the ruling class - and BTW we don't have a ruling class).
I think Europeans should look at the degenerate side of their own culture and media. The base newspaper cartoons in the UK, France, Germany, and all over Europe. Radio announcers saying things like that they wish a foreign leader would die and go to hell. Late-night talk show guests getting wildly applauded for declaring that they wish they had been a pair of the box-cutters used by the terrorists to kill Americans on 9-11. Do you ever hear or see anything that crass in American mass media?
And what about the racist anti-American slurs? Do you ever hear such slurs against other nationalities in American media? Do you see national flags up anyone's behind in a cartoon in a major American newspaper? How crass. Far more crass than anything you'll find find in American national media. Do you see human beings depicted as demons and apes and pigs in any the cartroons of any American newspaper? Do you hear of any people spoken of as "a bunch of hicks" or "bloodsuckers" by the network news anchors of any American TV broadcast?
No. No American medium would dare degrade another people or person or use such dehumanizing depictions of them. Indeed, what we now see in France and Germany is similar to what we saw done to dehumanize the image of the Jew in the 1930's. Europe's hate-speech laws just don't apply to hate speech against "those Americans."
It strikes me as rich for people with such dirty mouths to be complaining about poor taste in the media of another nation.
Bottom line: much of European mass media wouldn't pass the decency and hate-speech censorship standards we have here. So, I think it's about time Europeans examined their own culture instead of ours. Have we blown up any Renault or Volvo factores? Do we put up billboards advertizing "nothing European" in our manufactured products? Do you see best-selling books by the dozen in our bookstores on the subject of "why everybody hates France?" Do you see magazines on the racks claiming that "the German people are brutally uncaring about the rest of the people in the world"?
No, we have better things to do than run down other nationalities and cultures. Europeans call it being self-centered, we call it minding our own business.
And your comment, though true in many respects, passes over one very important point I made: European anti-Americanism is older than TV, older the United States. It has gone on nonstop, with only brief interludes while our help was needed in WWI and WWII. It was at least as virulent in the 1930's as today. That means something.
But one thing is different now. There is the Internet now. So, Americans are finding out about the mean spirited things being said about us behind our backs over there. It shocks and hurts and angers us. Our mainstream media can no longer bury the truth. So there WILL be repurcussions. Serious repurcussions.
Much more serious than the trivial annoyance of stupid TV themes and commercial ads.
One additional point I'd like to make. Europeans have been told BY THEIR MASS MEDIA that America is a dog-eat-dog land, where nobody cares about his neighbor. You reffered to this in mentioning the breakdown of "social structure." German magazines tell Europeans that Americans are freezing to death in winter. That only the rich get an education or decent medical care.
The truth is that people are freezing to death and begging for food on the streets of Paris in that bastion of Social Solidarity known as France. Not here.
Everyone passes by. They all look away. None is his brother's keeper. Why?
Because taking care of that poor wretch is Mamma State's job, not theirs. Right?
Like the heat wave that killed 15,000 French people because all the hospitals were closed and the French people wouldn't come back from vacation to deal with the emergency.
Now what was that again about AMERICA being the land where nobody cares about his neighbor?
Compare: Hurricane Katrina hits in the morning, and by noon, practically everything going on in Texas has stopped because multitudes of people have gone home to get food and blankets and take them to their churches and community centers for shipment to Louisiana. Nobody told them to: they just did it.
One man outside of New Orleans steals a boat and rescues a 100 people from their rooftops. Nobody told him to, he just did it.
Because here "I am my brother's keeper. I am a grownup, not a child for the nanny-state to mother. So, I don't sit around picking my nose and waiting for someone to come and take care of me and my neighbor. If my neighbor needs help, I help."
Indeed, the only place you see the European attitude here is in the welfare state of New Orleans itself.
So, is it capitalism or socialism that breeds an atomized society?
I ask Europeans to look again. Ask yourselves which is the society in which the social structure has broken down? where no one lifts a finger to help his neighbor? where people starve and freeze on the street while hundreds walk by looking the other way?
Kathy, I am quite affected since you exactly describe my experience. I live in the capital of a small country in Europe and I wish I could appreciate more than only the wonderful nature and few things in my country instead of feeling ashamed. It´s all so true, what you see.
For example - I am suffering from Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS/CFS/ME) for a long time and I am very grateful to every information about this disease and research on it available from America via internet. It helped me a lot while I have not yet found a single docter here who would have seriously attended to it and all the difficulties it causes for me. You won´t believe, but there are doctors here who deny to recognize CFS as real disease, but see it as "American fashion" or "American rubbish".
Last year there was an inquiry of a representative to the minister of health in my country about CFS connected with the awareness campaign in other countries (in your country "Spark!") - the minister answered, that there is no sufficient basis for public information steps since its cause still isn´t known and there is no prevention and no causal treatment possible. Actions relating to this would rather disconcerting patients with unspecific symptoms! !!
Though I´m housebound almost all the time each of my applications for support were rejected up to now. When the one who helps me with cooking and shopping is unable to be here and I cannot do myself I find myself in a plight - and again and again without any help and without the money necessary for available help.
When I complain here about not finding any help though I struggle to find - and when I point out that in America my neighbours would not starve me and there I would have the chance to find one committed attorney helping me, people often answer as you described.
They tell me that I have to be thankful to have social assurance and best medical care while millions of American people are without any assurance and could not even afford a doctor´s visit and medicines. And when poor in America like me I also would not find an attorney willing to help me. I would´t even get money for food and a roof over my head when unable to work ... and so on.
And for several times within the last weeks I either was reading in a newspaper or watching on TV an authority here in my country telling "Our health system is the world´s BEST one." and sometimes they also refer to the (terrible) "American conditions" in comparison.
And when I experience maltreatment here they deny it and tell that the problem is me.
I also want you to know that I am really very thankful to America for helping my country in World War II.
Once I watched a docu on TV ... interviews with survivors here and also with Americans who had helped to free my country. And there was something strange. The interviewed survivers seemed disconnected from their feelings and to what happened to them and made the impression that they were not regarding the National Socialists as the real enemy but America.
There was also interviewed an American pilot in WW II. He described how carefully America had organized its help and he obviously felt so concerned and sorry about the civil victims of the bombardement in my country.
Sorry for my language mistakes ...
and for people in my country thinking "anti-american".
Sad greetings from overseas, Tobi
Thank you Tobi, this American really appreciates that. We must try to remember that primarilly Europe's ruling class is to blame. They are responsible for all this misinformation and deliberately inciting anti-Americanism to keep the European people from turning away from socialism as their economies groan under the load.
A few facts for our European readers. I think it is around 70% of Americans in poverty own their own homes. Virtually all own an automobile and have have air conditioning. Wealthy blacks have more money than wealthy whites. The average black American has a standard of living slightly higher than the average Swede. And if you defined poverty the same way we do, you would have much more of it than we. Anyone can walk into any hospital emergency room and get free medical care. The government provides welfare for the poor. Education is free, and everyone knows that the best education in the world is to be had here in America. Indeed, all those free social services are what Mexicans are flooding over our southern border for! Yes, there are a lot of stupid Americans, and a lot of stupid Europeans. For example more than 50% of a French audience at a game show does not know that the earth goes around the sun.
How can Europeans be so fooled by their media lies about America? Only because they have never been to America and know nothing about it!
Shall I dust off the word "provincial" and throw it back at the Europeans so fond of dumping it on us?
Get out your passports and come see America. No, not just NYC. I warn you that it's 4,000 miles from coast to coast. And you may make the whole trip without once seeing a gun.
"Once I watched a docu on TV ... interviews with survivors here and also with Americans who had helped to free my country. And there was something strange. The interviewed survivers seemed disconnected from their feelings and to what happened to them and made the impression that they were not regarding the National Socialists as the real enemy but America."
I live in a country that was occupied by the nazi's and Ive seen many documentaries on all of this from childhood on and Ive never heard of survivors saying they though the Americans were the enemy. It might be, that these survivors somehow got brainwashed or maybe they were German's and not jews. It really sounds strange to me.
All the best.
It is strange. Very strange. That's the point.
They certainly didn't feel that Americans were anything but their saviors at the time!
But European media are rewriting history even in the minds of those who lived it, though few are still alive.
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