Don One

The narcissist wakes up in the morning and he doesn’t feel good. There is no automatic sense of glory, there is no basic happiness. His bedrock is not made of bright material. A troubled feeling – which he will either not notice or will misinterpret – sparks his self-medicative regimen. Thought (“I am perfect,” “I am uniquely special”) may precede and trigger a chemical sensation-emotion which is interpreted as superiority or powerful expansiveness, or the sensation may come first – triggered directly by the negative fog at waking or one later in the day – and bring some warm reminiscence of being admired recently or winning at something. These are chemical and ideational reactions not to the outer world: They are reactions to the deep self, the historical self that is a dark and unmade child. To escape, the brain and all systems have created an internality that is a perfumed bath, and that colors, uses, bends reality, makes it his name. That is to say, it is delusion, between orange and yellow on the spectrum of insanity.

This is what has duped its way into the White House.