Barksdale made HIS bad choice, and now it's unlikely the Moser Tannery can survive any more of Deaf Gahan's tender loving care.

Who'd have guessed he studied architecture? You'd think it was an elective at veneer salesman's school.

Moser Tannery photo credit: Nick A.

There's a nice profile of Deaf Gahan in Anxiety magazine.

Cash-stuffed envelopes won't ever be the same once HWC completes the design for the Jeff M. Gahan Campaign Finance Modernization Act of 2018.

Kinky retro pneumatic tubes are fast, easy, and donors needn't buy flower arrangements.

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The Psychology of Dictators: Power, Fear, and Anxiety, by Seth Davin Norrholm, Ph.D. and Samuel Hunley, Ph.D. (Anxiety)

 … Not only do dictators commonly show a "pervasive pattern of grandiosity," they also tend to behave with a vindictiveness often observed in narcissistic personality disorder ...

 ... An additional explanation of their behavioral patterns might be rooted in their individual personalities. Colloquially speaking, people often use "personality" as a synonym of how interesting a person appears to be in the eyes of onlookers, both within and from outside their respective sphere of influence. For instance, we might say that a loud comedian has "a lot of personality," whereas we might describe someone we view as boring and quiet as "lacking personality." 

In the psychological literature, though, personality is defined as the "enduring patterns of thinking and behavior that define the person and distinguish him or her from other people." In other words, your personality is what makes you distinct from those around you. In studying personality, psychologists can examine common traits across people and note how these traits may interact to predict behavior. In so doing, researchers can develop a better understanding of why people behave the way they do over the course of many years.

Narcissism Is A Consistent Trait

With regard to dictators, one particular trait that consistently stands out as relevant is narcissism. Narcissistic individuals have a "greatly exaggerated sense of their own importance" and are "preoccupied with their own achievements and abilities." They see themselves as "very special" people, deserving of admiration and, consequently, have difficulty empathizing with the feelings and needs of others.

When narcissism becomes extreme to the point that it:

• interferes with daily life
• appears to be unusual as compared to others within a society, or
• permeates multiple areas of an individual's life …

… that individual may be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, which is defined by a:

• "pervasive pattern of grandiosity"
• "need for admiration" and
• "lack of empathy"

These individuals are "preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success" and "power." They believe they are unique and can only be associated with others of equally high status. Furthermore, they require excessive admiration to remain happy, possess an extreme sense of entitlement, exploit others, and are often envious of others.

Vindictiveness Is Common

Descriptions of narcissistic personality disorder seem reminiscent of what we know of dictators. Not only do dictators commonly show a "pervasive pattern of grandiosity," they also tend to behave with a vindictiveness often observed in narcissistic personality disorder. 

For instance, in now famous psychological experiments, researchers found that highly narcissistic individuals were more likely to try to punish those individuals who negatively evaluated their work, even when the narcissistic person believed they were administering painful electric shocks. 

More recent work shows that, after a negative evaluation, narcissistic people will demonstrate greater aggression even to individuals unrelated to the feedback. Such experiments can help us understand the aggressive behavior of dictators, who are known to lash out against negative evaluations.

Surprisingly, narcissism could also help explain the anxious behavior displayed by dictators. Researchers have identified two forms of narcissism: grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism. Though grandiose narcissism is associated with all that you might expect from a narcissist (e.g., grandiosity and aggression), vulnerable narcissism is associated with an "insecure grandiosity," which seems to produce intense defensiveness and feelings of inadequacy. Such individuals are often described as being "worrying, emotional, defensive, anxious, bitter, tense, and complaining".

These components can be so extreme that narcissistic personality disorder can be misdiagnosed as borderline personality disorder, which is associated with high levels of anxiety. The intensity of the emotional experiences produced by narcissism in combination with actual dangers could produce remarkable levels of anxiety, worry, and uncertainty – to the point that one might actually consider moving their entire capital to the middle of a jungle based on the advice of an astrologer ...

Coffey's "them people" a transparent hoax, but then again, so is his career in politics.

Narcissistic personality disorder.

This disorder consists primarily of an inflated sense of self-importance coupled with a lack of empathy for others. Individuals with this disorder display an exaggerated sense of their own importance and abilities and tend to fantasize about them. Such persons also have a sense of entitlement, expecting (and taking for granted) special treatment and concessions from others. Paradoxically, individuals with narcissistic personality disorder are generally very insecure and suffer from low self-esteem.

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Last fall, 1st district councilman Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey became frustrated (default?) during council deliberations on redistricting. He gestured frantically to no one in particular, and then uttered the unintentionally revealing words for which he’ll always be remembered:

“Them people.”

For CM Coffey, it’s always been them people, and it will always be them people. Them people who know more, them people who are educated, them people who are capable, them people who achieve, them people who build, not destroy – forever and always, it’s them people who populate the daily, all-encompassing conspiracy theory that impels and misinforms congenital council obstructionists like Coffey and his generally reliable council lapdog, Steve Price, both of whom regularly seize upon non-existent bogey men to deprive their own districts of a future.

Monday’s city council meeting featured another long-winded display of Coffey’s favorite legislative tactic: Eternally lacking gravitas, and possessing no viable alternative to whatever it is that he opposes (this time), he substitutes seemingly endless verbiage in what amounts to a twice-monthly filibuster of anything approximating forward movement, whether in terms of council business or something as simple as turing the pages of the calendar.

Know that I hesitate to use the word filibuster because it contains four syllables and is thus banned in Coffey’s fiefdom of Westendia, but that’s what the numbing speeches amount to, and it is during these rambling and circular ejaculations of self-serving oratory that observers can detect the patented Coffey method, which might be described as improvisational fumbling for a tag line, a phrase he can repeat over and over in the absence of content, both to convince himself of its veracity and to attract the attention of his ever-shrinking band of like-minded, underachieving confederates.

Why the council president permits Coffey’s grandstanding is another matter for another day. Am I exaggerating the councilman’s inflated sense of self-importance? Come to a meeting, and you can be the judge.

On Monday night, Coffey seized upon the notion that the administration’s stated aim of converting Spring Street to two-way traffic provides the most convenient pretext for interjecting himself into a topic he doesn’t understand, squeeze a few additional weeks of enmity toward human progress during the 20th-century, and rally his rag-tag titterheads for another assault on them people.

Call it the Birdseye Gambit.

It doesn’t require a Bazooka Joe degree in cause ‘n’ effect to see which way Coffey’s wind is blowing, so don’t expect him to discuss anything as mundane as the merits of the actual proposal, now seized upon as sole talking point by other dues-paying members of the motley troupe that look to Coffey for wisdom in the same way that primitive peoples venerate empty Coca-Cola bottles that unexpectedly fall from the sky.

Just remember: I’m them people, and I’m for it … so, naturally, genetically, Dan Coffey’s against it, because a city with greater numbers of them people occupying positions of influence poses a mortal threat to his continued ability to wield influence wildly out of proportion to his abilities.

Anyone seen my broom and dustpan? It's time for a good sweeping.