I don’t even want to think about it.
Vester Lee Flanagan filmed his murder of two journalists on live television and then broadcast it to the world through social media.
Another little loser, who threw temper tantrums at the slightest non-provocation and deserved to be kicked around by life. Nice people extended a hand to him, invited him into their lives to try and help him, and his response was to make them so miserable they had no choice but to get away from him, at which point he swore a blood oath to destroy them as horrifically as he could. Now several families will wake up today to a much different, far sadder world.
Each month this site will get search traffic from fifty to a hundred people asking the search engine if their narcissist could kill them. The answer is yes, without question.
It takes very little to get along with most people. Most normal people can even fake civility with those they don’t like – and do it plausibly. If you are nice to someone, and notice they are intolerable in return, that is prima facia evidence there is something very wrong with them. If it is that noticeable, that you can’t ignore it, then that is a sign that they are not in control of themselves, and anything could happen.
Even worse, nobody wants to be admired and universally beloved more than the narcissist. If you meet one who can’t fake being even passably likable, despite this desperate desire, you need to be careful. They are seriously screwed up, in ways far deeper and less easily understood than a normal person can imagine, or would believe possible.
They will not choose to confront you directly, in honest competition. They will seek to get the upper-hand, and confront you only in such a way that you are powerless. The thought of losing to you is unbearable to them, and they will do anything – even the unimaginably craven and cowardly, to avoid it. They may try to catch you unarmed, when they have a gun. They may put something in your food, while pretending to be your friend. They may take years to do it.
Almost universally, their entire goal will be to elicit misery and horror. If you plumb their depths, one thing will stand out. They are not easily understood through logic, reason, or humanity. The more you examine them scientifically, the more you find that the only truly accurate characterizations seem to spring from the ancient understandings of good vs evil. Self-interest, amygdala, cognitive neuroscience, psychology – it all fails to describe them as well as simply grasping the concept of an evil that revels in misery, and is driven to selflessly ruin the lives of others. I have no doubt this fat little shit was giddy at the thought of the horrors everyone would experience, and never gave a second thought to what he was doing to his own life.
Sometimes, there may be nothing you can do. Here, he spent two years watching the news, festering with rage at how these people didn’t let him ruin their lives, before he decided to act. He spent two years buying bullets and carving initials into them, and feeling happy at the thought of how much everyone would suffer. If it gets to that point, as in this case, there may not be anything you can do. After two years in this case, even I’d have let my guard down.
The only answer is to understand the threat as you go forward, control access to your world, and recognize that sometimes those who are in need of a helping hand may be there because they have a long history of screwing over everyone they met. Sometimes the downtrodden you meet actually deserve to be trod down. Don’t be nice to everyone.
We’ve gone far too long absent a real period of Darwinian selection on human beings, culling for pro-sociality. As a result there are far too many of these characters out there, and I am convinced their numbers are growing. Be aware that they are out there, know they live to destroy people, and be careful who you let into your world.
Great post. It’s nice when you get away from Trump-worship for a moment.
You nailed it.
Too long have people who are worthless contributors of chaos been treated as objects of charity, when justice would have had them banished to the wilderness.
By the time real, predictable and ugly experience with the Welfare State drives the final nail into Progressivism’s coffin, people who are “down on their luck” will largely be assumed to have brought it on themselves, a viewpoint that was common prior to 150 years ago.
Learning how so many women are master manipulators of people, I now realize that the damsel in distress is almost always a harpy in search of a new victim. Such women don’t often kill, but they spread chaos in their wake.
Thank you for being a voice of reason! Your stories and insights about narcissists and how to deal with them are much appreciated.