“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Wounded Narcissism Part 57482572

Saxby Chambliss said that he wasn't gay, so he wasn't going to marry one, so he didn't support gay marriage. Yesterday another Senator (remind me who) said something very similar. And Rick Santorum of course announced that the GOP was committing suicide if they go down the path of supporting gay marriage.

Suicide for whom, Rick--yourself, I take it.

These remarks show what an existential threat gay marriage is to Chambliss et al.--and of course, one suspects, anything that triggers these guys' homophobia.

One commenter described it as the politics of narcissism, but I'd say that it's more like narcissistic personality disorder--which is caused by profound neglect of the neonatal infant. In other words, here we have textbook examples of wounded narcissism on the attack.

What is being warded off is the self-pleasuring, self-soothing loop, the dreaded A=A of Hegel's bad dreams.

And the reaction of the other--exemplified by the Twittersphere--is of course the reaction that wounded narcissists receive, which is a kind of exasperation. Thus confirming their sense of something hollow inside.

Somehow Santorum's words are the most information rich. They are somewhere between “I will kill myself if this happens” and “You deserve to die if this happens.”

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