Boundaries: Kryptonite To Narcissists & Tyrants Of All Sizes

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For months, people have been saying that we need to give Donald Trump (another) chance. Now that he’s been in office again for a few days, it’s pretty clear that he’s no friend to clean technology industries. In this article, I want to discuss the best way to fight back when facing a narcissist trying to gain the upper hand through force, fraud, or outright theft.

While there are certainly debatable arguments to be made for consumer choice and the proper role of government, when someone turns to lies and deception, their statements become less than wrong, or “not even wrong”. The biggest lie recently told was that there was an “EV mandate”, a verifiably false assertion. Lies like this make it impossible to have reasoned debate, and makes it clear that the goal is to deceive the public instead of earning their votes.

So, we find ourselves having to find other ways to fight back that don’t involve engaging in debate with those who have made it clear that they are no longer in the debate business.

Real Strength vs A Weak Person’s Version Of A Strong Man

First, we need to talk about weak and strong people, and where narcissists like Donald Trump lie on that spectrum.

Strong people do what it takes to win friends, be influential, and get people to naturally follow the strength of their leadership. They don’t need to threaten people, make laws with steep penalties, or use force to achieve their goals in life. For the truly strong leader, force is only a last resort saved for the most extreme of circumstances when there’s no other way to protect the good in the world. A strong person will defend themselves and a strong society will give aggressors a fair trial, but they won’t be the aggressor themselves.

Weak people, on the other hand, resort to deception, fraud, shaming, and using physical force to get what they want. Gaslighting, lies, social pressure, making strict laws to control people, and ultimately killing are all used to paper over the weakness of their ideas and intelligence. Weak people can’t afford to go with the flow in life and let emergence work for them because their ideas are not rooted in human reality. They have to break people to get what they want, and completely bypass using persuasion.

These weak people are almost always sociopathic narcissists. Narcissists are great at pretending to be strong and charismatic, but only for long enough to get to the point where they can switch over to coercion to get the rest of what they want. They know that they’ll never get the rest of the way without resorting to coercion, and they fake it with lies and deception until they get free of the restraints on their behavior.

How Do We Stop These Narcissists? Boundaries.

Whether it’s a president or an abusive partner, the answer is always the same: “NO!” Setting and maintaining boundaries is kryptonite to narcissists because they need enablers to support them while they abuse people.

Narcissists will bully you. They’ll threaten you. They’ll send hordes of flying monkeys to abuse you and try to ruin your life on their behalf. But, they can’t afford to let the mask slip too early and coerce you directly in the beginning, or they’ll be seen as the weaklings they are. Their only hope to eventually dominate you is for you to give in and not enforce your boundaries. Then, they can gain enough strength to break down the walls of your fortress, and then use you against other people who are still maintaining boundaries.

Whether you move from resistance to passive acceptance, or join the flying monkey brigades, you still help the narcissist. Whether you aid them or not, you become an example of what can be gotten away with. Friends, family, and other people you interact with will all see that you’re OK with it, and then feel like they have permission to side with the narcissist without losing standing with you.

Expert historian Timothy Snyder, who has extensively studied authoritarian regimes, applied this lesson (among others) on boundaries to national politics in this way:

“Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

If you look around, you’ll see it everywhere. People who were once opposed to Dear Leader have been bending the knee over the last year or so, with an increasing tempo as peers gave up on their boundaries. Wealthy and influential people were targeted. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others gave in and became flying monkeys. Major media outlets, social media networks, and even Tik Tok are all now serving their new master.

Just because these seemingly respectable people gave up on their boundaries and taught power what it could do doesn’t mean you have to do it. Be strong. Stick to what you believe in. Even if you are happy with Trumpism today, don’t mentally write the guy a blank check so that he can violate your boundaries later when he wants something insane from you and yours.

Circling Back To Clean Technology

When it comes to clean technologies, there are a number of ways to apply boundary-setting.

First off, it’s important to not let things like tax credits or even anti-cleantech penalties sway your decision-making. More importantly, you shouldn’t let fear of future penalties or reductions in incentives be your guide. Even with punitive registration fees that far exceed lost gas tax revenue, lack of net metering for solar installations, and tariffs that raise prices, adopting these technologies is still a good idea and will probably still save money.

Another important way to enforce boundaries is to let people know what your boundaries are. Let people know that you’re still going to use clean technologies and pursue efforts to promote them. When people (even if just friends and family) see that you’re going to be the odd man out, they’ll feel more comfortable defying the anti-cleantech momentum.

Finally, don’t let the flying monkeys get to you. These people, whether they’ll admit it to themselves or not, are doing the bidding of the narcissist they serve. But, if you complain about people leveling abusive behavior at you, all connections between the flying monkeys and the narcissist will be disavowed. It’s a cheap way to let the narcissist save face and look like the nice guy, while gaslighting you and saying you’re the liar for pointing out the connection between them and the narcissist.

If you cave in at this point, the narcissist wins without having to suffer any loss of standing with the public for having used force, political pressure, or financial pressure against you directly. Instead, make him spend the political capital trying to punish you while the whole world watches. Make sure they have to suffer through the “eat me” moment and get nothing for free.

Featured image: Winged monkeys from the original Wizard of Oz book, 1900. Illustration by W. W. Denslow (Public Domain).