The Ryan-Biden Debate

First, Biden’s smirk and the incredulous laughter is obviously a defensive mechanism to try and belittle his opponent’s case without debating facts. People don’t understand how just beneath the Narcissist’s bluster, is panic and fear. If you can hijack their amygdala during their bluster, even the most incredulous laughter will gradually give way to a glassy eye’d, vacant stare, combined with a panicked realization of their inferiority, and a corresponding increase in their passivity and submissiveness, ala Mike Wallace.

Were Ryan a Narcissist of course, this laughter would have functioned as an amygdala hijack. This is what I mean about Narcissists kind of knowing what they are sensitive to, and trying to use those stimuli to attack their opponents. In this case, had Ryan been like Obama, psychologically, he would have retreated into the slumped shoulders and the angry glare, and been thrown off his game. That Ryan only found it a minor nuisance, speaks to him being relatively normal psychologically.

Until then I had not pegged Joe as anything more than an idiot, though I hadn’t really looked too closely at him. But Bob did that exact same incredulous laugh/smirk all the time when he was factually/intellectually outgunned by somebody. After doing a search, I see others have documented it as a Narcissist trait, and I’m not surprised.

Of course another article said Biden showed signs of stress and discomfort as he did it. It wasn’t a genuine laugh – it was the attack of a wounded, fearful personality, and an attempt to hijack Ryan’s amygdala.

On Joe, Narcissists thrive by performing minor acts designed to make others feel like crap, while letting the Narcissist view their own situation as superior by comparison. If they pull it off, it temporarily quiets an amygdala perpetually wracked with insecurity. These acts will always be camouflaged, so it is not obvious the Narcissist is dumping on the person they emotionally attack and demean. They are cowards above all else. I suspect they learn to do this through conditioning as children. Don’t camouflage it as a kid, and you get your ass kicked for being a jerk.

A typical thought from the target will be, “There is no way he would do that purposefully, he must just be an idiot.” When the Narcissist gets away with it, he feels not only that he is superior in the way he demeaned his target, but also that he is smarter than everyone else, because nobody knows what he just did. He has controlled everyone’s perceptions, highlighted his own relative superiority, and nobody knows this. He’s so in control. Just as with the Liberal’s ultimate goal, he won, without actually competing.

I remember hearing about Joe telling a supporter in a wheelchair to stand up and let people see him. When I heard it, I wondered how he could be looking at the guy in the chair, and not be keenly aware the guy couldn’t stand up. Even though I know Narcissists, I reflexively thought, “What an idiot!” Now I wonder, was it purposeful? Old Joe highlighted to everyone that the wheelchair guy wasn’t able to stand or walk, and Joe could.

So even though Joe is like 110 years old, and the Botox has left him alternately looking like an Orc, or a really old, drunken leprechaun, he was still better off than wheelchair guy. Did he do that so his amygdala would give him a little peace?

Then there are the Indian guys, who all work in convenience stores (While Joe is an “important” politician by comparison), and Obama, who is unusually clean and articulate for a black guy (Said by Joe, who is the authority people look to for judgment on who is articulate and who is not).

The car accident anecdote was raised accidentally, but it is worth pointing out – never do something like that purposefully, to elicit negative emotion in Narcissists. There is a temptation to view Narcissists as overly-emotional. I once thought perhaps you could use emotional swings, one way and then another, to slingshot them into a higher emotional orbit, and trigger an even bigger meltdown. I studied Affect Psychology and the emotional concepts behind Traditional Chinese Medicine, but it doesn’t work. From an evolutionary standpoint, the Narcissist is not actually emotional, they are anger/panic prone relative to adverse changes in social standing.

This is because from an evolutionary perspective, they are fundamentally a child, seeking to maneuver to the top socially without being beaten or killed in open confrontation. Emotions like sadness play no role, except to elicit sympathy, which aids in threat avoidance and amygdala quieting. Tell a sad story from their life, to elicit sadness within them, and they will see their amygdala quiet, as they play it in such a way as to reap copious sympathy from the crowd, and insulate themselves from any threat of retribution. That quiet amygdala will allow them to gain strength and regroup.

Plus sadness doesn’t affect them as much, since they don’t form loyal bonds. Think of Mike Wallace, and his son’s death. Ridicule him, and his amygdala melts down. Talk about his dead son, and he really doesn’t care, beyond the fact he can now draw sympathy (and the Narcissistic supply it provides) from the crowd.

The only way to meltdown the Narcissist is with an endless stream of subtle Narcissistic injuries inflicting amygdala hijacks. The amygdala needs to rest, and if it can’t, it’s firing becomes exponentially more intense, until it is unable to continue. Long before the shutdown begins, it’s intense firing prevents accurate environment assessments, accurate prioritizations of stimuli, and accurate emotional calibration. This all makes cogent thought and effective reaction progressively more difficult (which itself further excites an already excited structure), and in the pressure cooker of a national debate, this can only help your cause.

On Ryan’s eye contact, it was excellent, but he needs to do something about that facial expression he wore during it. Eye contact is supposed to stimulate social dominance and threat perceptions in the inferior Liberal amygdala. Wearing this kind of non-threatening mouth/eyebrow position, while maintaining direct eye contact sends mixed signals by diluting the threat, and this probably blunts the effect.

Bring the center of the eyebrows down, and bring the outer edges of the lips together more, as if you are deep in thought, highly focused on something, and maybe even poised to act suddenly in some fashion, such as interruption. You can grin while doing this, but like Romney, it is best if it isn’t too wide, or you only use one side of your mouth.

Combined with Ryan’s aggressive, masculinized features, and physical fitness, it would have been much more effective on frail old Joe. Also, he should have interrupted Biden suddenly (but nicely), to make him feel surprised, oppressed, and attacked, as he maintained eye contact. Ryan will make a great President someday, but he needs lessons from Heartiste on how to exude Alpha and AMOG other guys – he’s just too nice a guy inside. As the polls since the last Presidential debate have shown, our populace has a lot of idiots who will vote for the guy who looks dominant. They shouldn’t just be left on the table, especially if a candidate like Ryan is a genuinely good guy.

What does all of this mean for the next debate?

If Obama’s team is coordinated with Biden’s, they may try to use this laughing/trust-us-not-them strategy now to contain Romney. As stupid as Biden looked, he still did way better than Obama. Clearly they will grasp at any opportunity at this point, and this did keep Ryan from running away with it. There is a problem with this, though.

First, Romney doesn’t appear to be a Narcissist pathology. He is just too disciplined and hardworking, and I don’t get the impression he regularly screws over those close to him to make himself feel better. He is more outwardly focused on personal success. I suspect he is just a genius level Aspie/mechanistic-type mind, maybe with an absence of emotion.

If he is, he will lack the overwhelming emotional response of the Narcissist, making amygdala hijacks like Joe’s kind of laughter little more than annoying distractions which he will be able to ignore. Add in a super-detailed, mechanical understanding of government, and the ability to think on his feet, and Obama has a lot of trouble which isn’t going to be easily fixed.

There are a couple of ways to avoid letting Obama try to escape through the laughing ploy. First, amygdala hijack him early in the debate with another “5 boys” type comment, portraying Obama as inferior/failure, untrustworthy, and ignorable, and Romney as superior/successful, trustworthy, and important. If Obama is angry inside (and anger is coming ever more easily to him, of late), he will have trouble faking the laugh.

This Obama face, trying to fake laugh, will just look stupid, and maybe even deranged.

Second, practice calling him out on it. Say, “I was hoping for an honest debate, where we each present our facts and let the audience decide. I would hope we aren’t going to see this debate devolve into the same types of silly theatrics and petty interruptions Joe Biden uses to avoid debates.”

Now, if the Liberals want to be trusted, and portray Team Romney as untrustworthy, have a list of Obama lies to rattle off. Halve the deficit, cut health insurance premiums, bring people together, etc. Obama will go for the “I didn’t know congress would stop me from doing all that good stuff” excuse. (Out-grouping congress.)

This sets up the bad two-fer, which screws with Narcissists epically. In a bad two-fer, you box the Narcissist in by asking a question, and then giving the Narcissist two bad answers to choose from, neither of which he wants to admit. This hacks into their defective neurobiology like a computer virus. In my experience, when the Narcissist has two answers, they cursorily consider each, ignoring the one which stimulates their amygdala and embracing the one which doesn’t trigger an amygdala response.

When both answers trigger the amygdala, the Narcissist can’t actually go in for a deeper look, to consider either, because each time they begin to consider it, it hits the amygdala, and they reflexively ignore it. The same pathological, amygdala-protecting denial mechanism, which leads to their grandiosity, their inability to contemplate criticism, and their pathological creation of a fictitious false reality around them, actually censors the two answers you give to them, from their brain, as they are trying to think about them.

Their mental defect makes it like bad answers are a hot potato, but they need to handle an answer to think about it. You tell them the two bad answers, and they lock up, trying to consider them, but unable to touch either one to examine it. If one answer is good, they can touch it, handle it, consider it, and accept it. But if both are bad, they bounce back and forth, unable to touch either one. If they then realize both answers are bad, and they look stupid, they panic even worse. Either way, the result is a mildly panicked state, marked by a glassy eye’d empty stare, in which you can then riff on at will, as they listen, helpless. I have done this in practice, and it is very effective.

To create a psuedo-computer programming analogy, the Narcissist has a program which runs when they are about to consider information. This weird “computer” program is what makes them a Narcissist, and creates a psychology so aberrant that it is defined as a pathological personality disorder. This Narcissist program is designed to shield their amygdala by detecting and censoring bad information before it enters processing, thereby preventing them from ever considering anything bad (this creates their false reality). It will actually force them to deny reality, by preventing them from considering it. This program says something like,

1 Input Information piece one; Consideration level = 1
2 Input Information piece two; Consideration level = 2
3 Analyze information piece with lowest consideration level
4 If information = bad ; ignore/deny it; add 2 to consideration level; goto line 3
5 If information = good; send to logic program

With two pieces of bad information, the program just keeps repeating lines 3 and 4, and adding two to each information piece’s consideration. The Narcissist just bounces back and forth from each piece of info to the other, and neither piece ever makes it to logic – it can’t – that’s why they are Narcissists. It is like a loop which locks up their computer, using their own programming command to deny even an exposure to the possible existence of any bad information. It won’t last forever, but it lasts long enough to clearly be weird, and disable them temporarily.

In this bad two-fer, Obama has just said he didn’t lie, because congress wouldn’t let him fulfill his promises. Romney should then point out to Obama that if he promised something which reality wouldn’t allow him to deliver on, then either he knew it was impossible when he promised it, and he lied, or he is so detached from reality he can’t figure out what is possible and what isn’t possible when he makes promises.

That is the type of choice which makes a bad two-fer. Considering either option means Obama considering a means by which he is defective. Narcissists just can’t do that, and being forced to try in front of others will screw with his cognitive processing, in a way normal people would have trouble imagining. The more of a Narcissist the target, the longer they lock up for.

Then, as Obama locks up, Romney should turn to the audience to riff. “Either way, whether he lies purposefully, or he lies because he’s detached from reality, his promises don’t mean anything, and can’t be trusted because he has a history of promising stuff he won’t deliver on.” Then bring up his promises that “Obamacare means you can keep your own health insurance,” “Obamacare means you can keep your own doctor,” “We won’t deny older people care and send them to a death panel, just because they are old, weak, and going to die soon anyway, and we need to cut costs,” “I’m going to fix this economy.” “The stimulus will drop unemployment 2 points.” Point out how none of these promises can be relied upon, because by the President’s own admission (slip that in quickly and move on), he promises stuff all the time which reality doesn’t allow. Then point out that each poses a real danger to real people’s lives and freedoms, and is not something to trifle with.

Romney could even follow it up with a little humor by using imagery, and asking people if a “Romney Presidency” (use those words for more amygdala) promised everyone a goose which lays golden eggs and a handful of magic beans, and then we didn’t deliver because they don’t exist, would that be a lie? Would you trust any other promises he made? If any people in the audience noticeably laugh, Obama’s amygdala is toast and another debate is over, even if it just started.

Whatever strategy Romney follows, Obama is now on eggshells, and that is exactly where Romney wants him. We should all be looking forward to this.