It’s Time to End the Abuse
On narcissism, the country it’s destroying, and what we have to do about it
I have had narcissistic people in my life.
Not casually. I mean, people who ran the full pattern on me — over years — until I no longer trusted my own read of the room.
One of them used to redefine my role constantly. What I was responsible for kept shifting. When I performed against the old definition, the new one was already in place. When I confronted it, I was the one who was confused. He’d go behind my back, collect information about me from other people, strip it of context, and bring it back as evidence against me. When I corrected the record, he said I was gaslighting him.
I have been in rooms when the rage came. And it always came from the same place — not from my failures, but from my successes. From moments when I had too much standing. When the balance shifted slightly in my direction, something in them could not tolerate it.
That is what narcissists do. They make promises they never intend to keep — because the promise isn’t the point. The promise is the hook. You reorganize your life around it. You run in the direction they pointed. Then they change course without acknowledging that the promise was made. If you bring it up, you’re the problem. You’re living in the past. You’re being difficult.
The target always moves. That’s not incompetence. That’s a system.
And living inside that system does something to you. It destroys your self-esteem. Slowly. You stop trusting yourself. You become hypervigilant, reading every room, every signal, trying to anticipate the next shift. You exhaust yourself performing loyalty to someone who will never be satisfied with it.
I’m telling you this because I want you to understand what is happening to America right now.
I am not speaking in metaphor.
A narcissist is a vampire.
They don’t produce anything. They feed. They feed on your attention, your loyalty, your fear, your hope. And when they have drained one source, they move to the next, leaving behind people who can no longer trust their own judgment.
That is what is happening to this country.
I see the same traits in Donald Trump that I saw in the people who wore me down. The same hunger for loyalty that is really a demand for lies. The same rage that comes not from your failures but from your competence. The same promises made and unmade without acknowledgment. The same cycle of humiliation and re-acceptance that never fully restores.
But here’s the thing about living inside that dynamic long enough: you stop naming it accurately. You find other words. You call it chaos. Disruption. Unconventional leadership. You say he’s playing 5D chess, or that he’s misunderstood, or that this is just how he negotiates. You reach for any explanation that isn’t the one that’s true — because the one that’s true is too dangerous to say out loud.
That’s not a weakness. That’s what abuse does. It trains you to protect the abuser from the word that describes them. In families, people do it for years. In workplaces, they do it until someone finally gets fired, quits, or breaks down. In countries, apparently, they do it until the damage is too large to explain away with softer language.
We have been doing it for years with this president. The media does it. Republicans do it. A lot of ordinary Americans do it — not because they’re foolish, but because naming an abuser costs something. You lose relationships. People don’t believe you. The system that has organized itself around him punishes the person who says it plainly.
So we don’t say it plainly.
We need to say it plainly.
Look at the people around Trump. James Comey told him he’d give him honesty. Trump said at a private dinner, one week into his first term: I need loyalty. I expect loyalty. Comey refused. He was fired. Then investigated. Then indicted — years later, on charges so weak the original prosecutor declined to bring them and was himself forced out for refusing.
The message was not subtle. Loyalty means lying. It means saying what he needs said, regardless of whether it’s true. RFK Jr. told the Senate under oath he was not anti-vaccine. Pam Bondi promised an independent Justice Department. Marco Rubio called Trump a con man into the microphones. He believed it enough to say it out loud.
He does not say it anymore.
That’s not a change of heart. That’s a cowed man.
The cabinet of the United States is supposed to be independent people who serve the country. That’s the job. The job is to tell the president what is true. That is not what is happening. What is happening is a group of people who know better, performing loyalty to a man they cannot safely contradict, because the consequence of contradiction is not disagreement. It is exile. Public humiliation. The withdrawal of belonging.
And belonging inside the MAGA world is everything.
Now look at what the promises have actually cost us.
Netanyahu lobbied Trump to go to war with Iran. According to multiple diplomatic sources, he pushed hard. The stated goal was regime change. The regime has not changed. The IAEA still cannot get back into inspecting the nuclear sites. The location of Iran’s highly enriched uranium remains unknown.
To manage the crisis Trump helped create, the United States had to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian oil. Russia — which is still waging war on Ukraine, still using Iranian drones to kill Ukrainians — is now selling oil at a premium instead of a discount. Iran is charging ships up to $2 million a vessel to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which it now controls. Both countries are about to get very rich. Putin is the biggest winner of this war. Netanyahu is a close second.
The ceasefire Trump announced this week doesn’t even apply to Lebanon, where Israel continues to strike without warning.
We rewarded ethnic cleansing. We handed Russia an economic windfall. We left Iran in permanent control of the Gulf. And we’re supposed to call this a win.
This is what happens when you run a country the way a narcissist runs a relationship. You end up exhausted, disoriented, defending outcomes you never would have accepted when you started, because the bar kept moving and you kept running toward it.
The people who voted for Trump are in the same trap.
Prices went up. The manufacturing boom didn’t come. The war nobody voted for is consuming money, lives, and gas at the pump. And still the loyalty holds — because leaving means admitting you were manipulated. Because something in the human nervous system, when it has been conditioned by a relationship like this, keeps waiting for the warmth to come back.
It always comes back. Briefly. Just enough.
That’s not politics. That’s a trauma response.
The people who were humiliated and cast out — and then quietly welcomed back — were never restored. The humiliation stays on the record. It becomes a weapon. The lesson everyone around Trump learns, consciously or not, is that survival requires constant performance of loyalty, and that one wrong move means destruction.
That is what this man has done to the country. He is a narcissistic vampire. He has been feeding on our attention, our fear, our hope, and our tax dollars — and the country is starting to look like the people I have known who spent years inside a relationship like this.
Depleted. Destabilized. Unsure of the future.
Seventy percent of Americans say prices are higher. Thirty-nine percent approve of the job he’s doing. More than half the country tells pollsters they believe things are getting worse.
That feeling is accurate. Name it for what it is.
The first thing that breaks the cycle is always the same.
Name what you’re dealing with.
Not a disruptor. Not a dealmaker. Not someone too big and too fast for conventional politics to contain.
An abuser.
Running the country the way abusers run everything they touch.
Until someone stops them.
That day is coming.