Despite seven turncoat Republican senators, the Senate voted to acquit Trump following the impeachment trial against him. Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell joined in this vote. However, he later accused Trump of being responsible for the events at the Capitol on January 6. By doing so, McConnell, rather than indicting Trump, only revealed his own narcissistic duplicity.

Colloquially, “narcissist” refers to someone in love with himself because Narcissus, a figure from Greek mythology, fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. “Narcissist” can also refer to a personality disorder.

One common trait in all narcissists is a refusal ever to take responsibility for things that go wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault, so you’ll never hear the words “I’m sorry” pass a narcissist’s lip. My sister and I still laugh that, whenever my mother accidentally broke or spilled something, she turned to us and said, “Look what you made me do.”

The narcissist, in his own mind, never starts a fight. If he throws a punch, he’s not fighting; he’s meting out appropriate discipline. The fight occurs only because you decided to hit him back. He has a license to act; you have no right to react.

Narcissists carry this attitude with them if they are closely associated with an institution. The lousy school isn’t failing to teach its students; instead, the students are stupid people who won’t learn. Every employee, especially the bad teachers, will accept this attitude as gospel and repeat it with fervor.

If you’re wondering what this has to do with Mitch McConnell, read what he had to say about Trump:

In a speech on the Senate floor on Saturday, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) held President Trump responsible for inciting the Capitol riot but said the Senate lacked the constitutional authority to impeach the former president over it. 

“There is no question – none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell argued, reiterating an earlier statement. “No question about it.”

“The people who stormed this building believed that they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,” McConnell continued. “And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

Mitch McConnell is speaking for a corrupt institution – the Deep State. What he’s saying is that it’s impossible that the Deep State and its actors across America committed a massive fraud that allowed a stupid, corrupt, senile, and radical old man who never left his basement to prevail in an election against a president who had a 51% approval rating and was able to hold massive rallies during an alleged pandemic. And it’s impossible that corrupt institutions could have changed voting systems to enable tens of thousands of fake ballots to get counted. And it’s impossible that computer voting systems could be hacked to benefit Biden.

Because McConnell’s narcissism makes it impossible for him to concede fault – to concede that the system “punched” Trump first – then any fault must lie with Trump for daring to punch back. In McConnell’s world, Trump should have just sucked up the terrible wrong done to him and to the 75 million (or more) people who voted for him.

When the Deep State that McConnell represents hits you, you don’t hit back. If you hit back, it’s you who are at fault; the system is always innocent.

Of course, there may be more than narcissism behind McConnell’s identification with corrupt institutions. Through his wife’s family, he has deep financial ties to China – and the biggest beneficiary of Biden’s election is China. Trump’s willingness to exercise his First Amendment speech rights threatened McConnell’s well-being.

McConnell also ignores the fact that Trump had the reasonable belief that his supporters would honor law and order and always act peaceably (just as he told them to on January 6). After all, at least since the Tea Party began during Obama’s administration, conservatives have never run riot. More than a decade of tried-and-true peaceable behavior strongly indicated that this behavior would continue. It’s the rabble that the Democrat side of the Swamp rouses that can be reasonably expected to respond to Democrat commands to fight, riot, push back, and commit violence. (You can see here video evidence of both Republican respect for the law and the Democrat impulse to violence.)

I will always be grateful to McConnell for his stalwart stand on the judiciary. In all other regards, the man is indecent.

IMAGE: Caravaggio’s Narcissus (public domain) melded with Mitch McConnell by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0).