Arming a Lunatic -- Big Time!

Curious, isn't it, that there is any overlap at all between those folk who would block gun purchases by people who have been diagnosed with emotional problems and the Donald Supporters who would arm a self-proclaimed vindictive and retaliatory billionaire (tC ... the Counterpuncher) with the nuclear arsenal! I've often wondered out loud whether it's best to consider life a Comic-Tragedy or a Tragic-Comedy, but it never occurred to me to consider it a Stoppard Farse! And you never heard me suggest that Little Donald is crazy, like Farid Zakharia, the Washington Post and Lord Knows how many Republicans in the past two weeks who have painted a disturbingly comic picture of Donald Trump -- we'll cut his hair out for the moment.

But back to weaponizing people with serious emotional problems ... There is no evidence I know of that demonstrates that schizophrenics have a higher rate of committing violent acts than the rest of us human-folk. Experience, nonetheless, seems to be that folk with certain severe personality disorders are more prone to rage reactions and violence. There is -- nonetheless and to further complicate matters -- much difference of thinking on what constitutes a personality disorder. Perhaps, the two most commonly discussed categories have been Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders ... two categories of behavior that do, arguably, have a great deal of overlap. During the 1970's, there were many, many public and written discussions on whether one was a subgroup of the other. No particular resolution. Still ... 

The Borderline Personality is dominated by what the Shrinks call "splitting" ... the inability to find the grey in Self or others ... the inability to offer those s/he meets "the presumption of good intentions," but rather to see them as good as gold until these others fail the Borderline Sufferer and quickly become dog-shit. Those suffering from such disorders cannot maintain for very long any given mood in themselves any more than they can maintain a comfortable set of feelings towards others. Their sense of the World permits preciously little nuance and relies solely on their own perceptions. Convincing such folk that the Other's way of taking in the World has any merit pretty uniformly falls flat.  "My way or the highway."

Those laboring on with a Pathologically Narcissistic Personality Disorder are those incapable of allowing for the healthy good feelings of others (their healthy narcissism). They may be either grandiose or self-deprecating ... It's a bit harder to see the self-depreciative version as Narcissistic  until one realizes how they, indeed, see themselves as the only ones capable of seeing just how depraved they are and how their depravity goes further than anyone else's "mere/garden-variety depravity." Indeed people with this disorder cannot empathize, that is, cannot see an-Other as a Subject in Their Own Right ... as someone with their own pains, pleasures and ways of seeing the World. It was the Khans who openly questioned DT's capacity for empathy ... it was Mr. Trump's response that so clearly demonstrated Mr. Khan's hypothesis.

Any case, best for us to be wary of anyone who displays both the volatility of the Borderline and the strict self-absorption of the Narcissist.

Zo! SOMEONE SHOULD  MAYBE DO 

A BACKGROUND CHECK ON THIS ONE!

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