It would be a classic narcissist amygdala attack:
A BREAKING NEWS, Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) communique is reporting that a comment allegedly made by outgoing President Obama to President Elect Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner in their secret meeting Wednesday at a Marine Corps Base in Hawaii was so antagonistic that US Secret Service agents had to intervene!
Their meeting “erupted in a Scream Fest that caused US Secret Service protective agents to intervene before physical violence was caused.” Kushner was reacting to stark criticism of his father in which Obama, “suggested/implied that his father, Charles Kushner, might be safer living in Israel if the Trump team didn’t like how he, Obama, was doing his job. The alleged ensuing profanity from the younger man [was] said to cause the Secret Service agents to approach him in a protective stance.”
I will bet most people think Obama just blurted this out on the spot, and it happened to be particularly offensive to Kushner. Still others will think Obama blurted it out on the spot trying to be offensive. I suspect, based on my dealings with narcissists, Obama has been mulling this interchange over in his head for some time. The entire exchange had been prepared beforehand, like a complex ballet, maybe even for weeks prior to it occurring.
You never know if this whole story is true, of course. The sourcing is thin. But when I read it one thing jumped out at me as a detail which would occur in real life, but which I do not think someone composing the story might think of. That detail is that Obama went right to Jared’s father.
Way back, my narcissist Bob had mentioned that all his brothers were coming into town for a family get-together. That was unusual. According to the story I heard from a member of his family, they had a family reunion when they were younger which devolved into a big brawl. They were spitting on the TV for emphasis as they screamed, throwing beer mugs at each other, and over turning furniture, and two came to blows and had to be pulled apart. For a decade and a half after nobody in the family would talk to anyone else, and the idea of a reunion was never on the table again even once they began talking.
I never realized it, but I was very similar physically to a younger brother of Bob’s, who he didn’t like. I suspect that is why I had problems with Bob. He conflated me in his mind with his brother. I even once heard him refer to me in a conversation with someone else, using his brother’s name for me, as if on some level he couldn’t tell the difference between us at times.
So about two weeks before the big family get-together between Bob and his brothers, out of the blue, while I was with Bob, be suddenly grew quiet. I realized in retrospect, he was preparing his presentation. He turned to me, and said, “You know, I think my mother had an abortion.” He was older by this point, and that would have been decades back, so my initial reaction internally was, “Why the fuck would I care?”
I looked at him quizzically, and realized he was hyper-focused on my face, his eyes wide, and his expression blank but intense, as he was taking in every subtle nuance of my facial expression.
“What do you mean?,” I asked. By now I was getting confused. Something was going on, and I knew it, but it was totally getting by me.
“My mom had an abortion. I remember I was a little boy.” Now he segued into what seemed a practiced rehearsal, as emotion returned to his face, he leaned back into an easy delivery, and the words flowed in a practiced fashion.
“One day, she got all dressed, and told me I had to come with her. We got on a train, and the whole trip was very mysterious. She wouldn’t tell me anything, and we went to Philadelphia. She went to some place, it as like a doctor’s office, and I had to wait in a room, and then she came out and we went home. I remember feeling like we weren’t supposed to talk about it. I am certain it was an abortion.”
Just like that, the practiced fashion evaporated, his emotion drained from his face, and as his head snapped back to look at me, he reacquired that blank, hyper-intense, wide-eye’d expression as he scanned every crevice and wrinkle in my face, looking to gauge my reaction to this revelation.
I seem to remember feeling confused, as this all came out of the blue. I shook my head, and said, “That’s weird,” and then returned to what I was doing. Nine out of ten interactions with him back then consisted of me auto-piloting an answer as I wondered what the hell was going through his head.
The interaction made more sense weeks later, when word drifted back to me about his little family get-together with his brothers. It turns out they all took turns rehashing nostalgic stories. There was the time his crazy brother jumped off the high bridge, and splashed in the river, and someone told his mom when she came to pick him up. She began slapping him as they went in one side of some bushes, and she was still slapping him as they came out of the other side. There was the BB that skipped off the water and hit one brother in the ass, and he proceeded to begin firing BBs at everyone on the other side of the pond, just to be sure he got the one who he thought had shot him purposely. Each story precipitated waves of laughter and nostalgia.
And then it was Bob’s turn, to tell his devoutly Catholic brothers who idolized their mom, about the other brother who should have been there with them, and who couldn’t be, because their round-heeled mom had gone and gotten him clothes-hangered into a trash can somewhere way back, when he was just a fetus.
From the account I heard, the whole room dropped completely silent as Bob pretended to just be accidently releasing a stream of consciousness, oblivious to the possibility it might have been objectionable. For ten seconds you could hear a pin drop as brothers looked at each other in astonishment at this revelation about mom. One wife who knew just what was happening stifled a giggle, and then looked with wide eyes, waiting to see who would go volcanic first, and what particular flavor of violence would bring this reunion to an end.
As I was told the story, I realized what had happened a few weeks earlier. Bob had been testing this amygdala hijack on me. I suspect he had somehow melded me with his little brother in his mind, and this made him think he could field test the hijack on me, and look for if it would have had enough of a shocking effect.
I think in his mind, he was hoping I would be repulsed. I didn’t know his mom, didn’t feel related to him or her, and could have cared less, but for some reason his melding of me and his brother led to a reflexive perception that he could use me to judge the effectiveness of the hijack. Some aspects of narcissist cognition and predictive ability are extraordinarily degraded by their inability to separate similar concepts in their mind.
So back to Obama and Kushner. Why did Obama refer to Kushner’s father? If you or I were in a normal extemporaneous conversation, we would focus on each other. The parent of a stranger would never even enter our mind. If you and I are talking, why would I mention your dad?
But if you are a narcissist, then you plan amygdala hijacks, as I now realize my narcissist Bob did for weeks prior to his family reunion. In planning a hijack for Kushner, you would look for something which would have laid deep pathways in his amygdala – something stressful, something traumatic, something emotional, and something they would still remember years later.
The turmoil surrounding Jared’s father’s tangles with the legal system would certainly fit the bill. From an outsider’s perspective it would appear that Jared Kushner has had a relatively idyllic life of wealth and ease outside of that one small interlude. For a narcissist like Obama who is crafting an amygdala hijack, that legal event with Jared’s father is exactly where his focus would immediately fall.
The moment he would bring up the idea of adversity befalling Jared’s father, within Jared’s brain, the amygdala would recognize a pattern it had seen previously which was associated with enormous negativity, and all those pathways of anger, angst, irritation, fear, and frustration would light up all over again. It is like the twig snapping just before a lion attacks. You never hear the twig-snap the same again.
Sadly, from the sound of it, Jared’s amygdala lit up and he took the bait. It happens, we all have our triggers. Notice the child-like imagery, of Obama hiding behind the Secret Service as he tries to taunt Jared. That is a little kid, who was always a loser, and always getting his ass kicked, finally taking out his frustrations on the cool kids, while protected from the inevitable ass-kickings he got as a youth. That constantly operating from a position of weakness is why Obama has learned all this – he had to because it was the only way he could lash out growing up.
I found it amusing that a Russian once said that Obama was only ever tough with Putin when the Secret Service was within arm’s reach. He was conditioned as a kid, to expect an ass-whupping, if it was at all possible. Even as an adult, he still operates as if he is on that school-yard playground, even while a US President at a State Dinner in the Kremlin.
What Jared should have done – what you always do with a narcissist, is still-face them, as you present a concept that will recall the agonies of their youth. “You’re really something – you are still trying to get back at the kids who kicked you in the head and took your soccer ball back in Indonesia. You are still living your entire adulthood as if you are still that little kid getting bullied and beaten up by all the cool kids. This is a different country, and you are an adult now. You need to grow up and not get so emotional and worked up over things that happened 50 years ago.”
Then, as Obama gets worked up telling you he isn’t worked up, you give him the Gary Busey still face, and watch him go all Meatloaf on you.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because we need more liberals amygdala hijacked
