Over the weekend, my best friend was playing “Looney Tunes” clips for the amusement of his kids, and we started talking about the cartoon where Daffy Duck — frustrated by Bugs Bunny’s popularity — keeps trying to one-up him, until finally, Daffy swallows explosives and blows himself up.
The audience goes wild and even Bugs Bunny is impressed: “That’s terrific, Daffy! They want more!”
Daffy, who is now a ghost floating up to heaven, laments, “I know, but I can only do it once.”
(The cartoon, from 1957, is called “Show Biz Bugs.”)
I’ve been thinking about the cartoon in relation to you-know-who. I’ve developed a theory about you-know-who and the people around him.
(One of the great things about our current moment in history is that when you say, “Did you see what he did now?” no one needs to ask “Who do you mean?” Everyone knows. My wife just calls him “That guy.” As in, “I don’t want to talk about that guy any more.”)
“That guy” literally has no shame. There is no bar too low. I hate playing Lucy Van Pelt, five-cent psychoanalyst, but if there has ever been a more perfect illustration of a narcissistic sociopath than that guy, I’d be hard-pressed to identify them. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the so-called DSM) gives nine criteria for narcissistic personality disorder:
- Exaggerates achievements and talents
- Fantasizes about unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty
- Believes they are “special” and unique and can only be understood by other special or high-status people (or institutions)
- Requires excessive admiration
- Expects especially favorable treatment or automatic obedience
- Takes advantage of others to achieve their own ends
- Is unwilling to recognize the feelings and needs of others
- Envies other people or believes other people envy them
- Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
All of us probably have been guilty of some of those things, some of the time. But when you’re doing most of those, most of the time, you probably need to get to a shrink (although everything I’ve read indicates that narcissistic personality disorder is extremely difficult to treat).
And if you’re doing all of those, all of the time, you’re probably that guy.
And that’s the thing — almost no one is doing all of those, all of the time. Again, I’m no expert, but everything I’ve read about narcissistic personality disorder is that most people feel some sense of shame, which either makes them change their behavior or seek help. Their conscience nags at them. Or maybe they see that their friends and family are horrified, and they’re snapped back to reality.
Is there any evidence that guy has a sense of shame?
Is there any evidence that guy has a conscience?
So here’s where my theory has developed, and I think we just saw it play out with Elon Musk.
Now, I’m going to pretend I’m Lucy Van Pelt and offer my five-cent psychoanalysis. Keep in mind, I’m completely unqualified and may be wrong. Here goes:
I think Elon Musk is obviously a deeply flawed person, but I think he’s also self-aware enough that he has a conscience and a sense of shame. It’s what drives his desperate need to be liked.
I suspect his drug use is an attempt to self-medicate and silence the voices in his head that tell him when he’s doing something wrong. At the very least, he gets embarrassed. (We’ve all seen how desperately he wants to be liked.)
That’s not to defend Musk in any way. But I think it goes a long way toward explaining why Musk was always going to lose to Donald Trump when the two went head-to-head.
Trump is absolutely shameless. Trump, famously, never drinks, and supposedly doesn’t use illegal drugs. There are no nagging doubts in Donald Trump’s head that need to be silenced, because he has no shame.
They’re both narcissists, at least in the common way people understand the term, in the sense of being self-centered in the extreme. But Trump is sui generis.
There was no way Musk was going to debase himself enough to stay in Trump’s good graces. No one with even a shred of self-respect remaining can debase themselves enough to out-sleaze Trump.
No matter how low you go, like Daffy Duck, he will top you.
Elon Musk was not willing to blow himself completely up. So he blinked. That guy wins and he loses.
It’s a pattern we’ve seen before with the people around Trump. Remember those images of Marco Rubio, sitting on the couch in the Oval House, looking absolutely humiliated? It became a meme.
Look at him, sitting over on the far right. That’s the face of a man who is feeling shame. Marco Rubio will never win a fight with that guy, because whatever you may think about Marco Rubio, he will never be willing to do what it takes to win, which is lie, cheat and steal at a level that would humiliate anyone who still has even a tiny shred of conscience:
That’s my theory as to why that guy defeated everyone — including Rubio — in the 2016 Republican primary elections.
It’s also my theory as to why that guy keeps rolling top Democratic leaders, who insist on playing by some sort of “rules” that only they seem to want to follow. That guy is not going to be embarrassed when you point out that he’s breaking the rules, because he cannot be embarrassed.
And finally, it’s my theory why people (like Rubio) keep agreeing to work for that guy and invariably get humiliated by him. They think they’re smarter than him, and that they can control him. They don’t account for the fact that he’s going to do whatever is necessary to win, and they just can’t debase themselves enough to compete on that level. Their consciences kick in. They blink. They flinch.
The difference between that guy and Daffy Duck is that unlike Daffy, he keeps coming back for more. Maybe, like a character in a Greek tragedy, his shamelessness will eventually catch up with him and cause his downfall. But until the forces of good are willing to compete at his same level, I somehow doubt it.
Five cents, please.