In Joel Bakan’s 2004 book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit (2004), a book I assign in my undergraduate course Freedom and Social Control, as well as the companion documentary by the same name, Bakan interviews Dr. Robert Hare, the renowned Canadian psychologist who developed the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R), a twenty-item diagnostic tool used to assess psychopathic traits in individuals. Bakan asks Hare to apply his checklist to modern corporations since corporations have, by law, been given the status of persons. In the documentary, Hare, in so many words, asks: If the corporation is a person, then what type of person is it?
When the corporation is analyzed in this way, Hare finds that it exhibits a textbook pattern of psychopathic behavior: callous disregard for the well-being of others, chronic irresponsibility, deceitfulness, incapacity for guilt or remorse, and a tendency to manipulate others for self-gain. Corporations, driven by the singular legal mandate to maximize shareholder profit, routinely externalize harm— deceiving consumers, exploiting labor, polluting the environment—while showing no empathy or moral restraint beyond what regulation or reputation requires. Hare concludes (although he later partially walks this back after receiving backlash from, presumably, corporations) that if such an entity were an actual human being, it would meet the clinical definition of a psychopath: glib, manipulative, remorseless, entirely self-interested—operating without conscience but ostensibly within the letter of the law.
As I was writing this morning (as I do most mornings—thousands of words a day), I reflected on this approach to the study of the corporation and wondered if other organizations and institutions could be given a similar treatment. My mind immediately went here: what type of person would the Democratic Party be if it were a person? Given the party’s penchant for moving from crisis to crisis every week, I returned to my training in psychology and reviewed the inventory of personality disorders.
The diagnosis didn’t take long to form. In the APA’s DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), there is a category called “Cluster B,” which refers to a group of personality disorders characterized by dramatic, emotional, or erratic behavior.
Personality disorders are long-standing patterns of behaving, feeling, and thinking that deviate from cultural expectations and cause distress—not only for the afflicted but for those around them. There are four Cluster B personality disorders: antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic. That last type immediately struck me as particularly relevant. It is associated with aggression, blame-shifting, manipulation, rage, and savoir complex. These are particularly manifest during what psychiatrists call narcissistic-driven crisis, also known as narcissistic collapse. Bingo.
Narcissistic-driven crisis behavior—and you probably know people like this (I know I do)—is a form of psychological control in which an individual attempts to maintain dominance and emotional centrality by keeping those around him in a state of perpetual upheaval. For the narcissistic personality, stability threatens his sense of importance and power. However fleeting the resolution, the crisis restores it. By framing conflict and setbacks as catastrophes or manufacturing emergencies out of small or imaginary problems, the narcissist ensures that attention, energy, and decision-making flow back to him to feed his ego. This constant state of “everything’s going wrong” keeps others dependent, emotionally off-balance, and reactive, conditions under which the narcissist deflects blame and reasserts control.
Sound familiar? Think about the continual psychogenetic illness and endless protests, from “Pussy Hats” to “No Kings,” that Democrats have visited upon the American public. Hillary Clinton lost the election! How did feminists react? Trump is on track to win reelection in 2020! How did progressives react? Trump won in 2024! How did Democrats react? Trump enforces immigration law. Trump ends DEI. Trump recognizes only two genders. Trump renovates the White House. Trump makes peace around the world (he just secured yet another ceasefire today between Cambodia and Thailand). How does the left react to each of these? With panic, ridicule, refusal, and violence. Can you see the pattern? I cannot unsee it.
Beneath this pattern, in the individual, lies a fragile self-esteem that cannot tolerate being ignored or rendered marginal or unnecessary. And so we can observe this at scale. Democrats cannot tolerate feeling marginalized and powerless. They want total control over the situation. Crises serve as a stage on which the Party can act as the indispensable hero, savior, victim, or visionary surrounded by incompetence and existential threats. How do they portray Trump and MAGA? Backward, deplorable, and stupid. Trump and MAGA are none of these things, but the narcissist needs those around him to see them this way so he can exert control over them. And so deluded is this narcissist that has shut down the government while admitting this action hurts society’s most vunerable.
The crisis cycle the narcissist sets in motion is self-reinforcing: chaos produces the attention and validation he craves. Would anybody deny that the rank-and-file progressive craves attention? Even some of its elites do! The multicolored hair. The extreme body modification. The coming out rituals. Drag Queen Story Hour. The demand that others adopt the rituals of such delusional and contradictory thought-systems as antiracism and gender identity. These people can never not be in crisis. Moments of calm and progress provoke anxiety or boredom, leading them to stir conflict anew. Over time, many of those around such persons become fatigued, guilty, and uncertain, walking on eggshells to prevent the next eruption. These effects are intended by the narcissist’s actions. What looks like drama and misfortune from the outside is a desire to construct a controlled environment, a situation designed to preserve the narcissist’s sense of superiority and protect his fragile ego.
As I write this, I am reminded of Frederich Nietzsche’s remark, “Insanity in individuals is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” This is related to what is sometimes called “wolf pack syndrome,” or more clinically, mass psychogenic illness. Whatever it is called, it is the madness of crowds. Collective dynamics can amplify extreme emotions and erode individual accountability. We observe this tendency in the echo chambers of internet chat rooms, mob behavior on our streets, and the spread of social contagions. But I wonder whether the madness of the progressive individual is not so much the result of her or his tribal affiliation, but rather that the tribe is at scale mad because its constituents are mad themselves.
Considering who Democrats defend and represent, this seems likely to be the case. For many of those identifying as transgender, for instance, what I am describing in this essay is the personality type in operation, along with antisocial, borderline, and histrionic types. The antisocial type disregards and violates the rights of others. The histronic type is marked by a pattern of attention-seeking behavior, dramatic expression, and emotional dysregulation. So, too, is the borderline personality—and, moreover, that type is unpredictable and self-harming. This explains the constant cries of victimhood, the emotional blackmail, and the self-mutilation. Failure is rationalized as “oppression.” The inability to follow rules is rationalized as “resistance.” Acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence become forms of “justice.” Far from the gales of creative destruction (these aren’t genuine rebels and revolutionaries), destruction is sought for the sense of personal empowerment it conveys to a bent and fractured personality.
Is it not obvious that Antifa is largely composed of emotionally dysregulated youth who, anxious and bored, spend their days figuring out ways to create conflict and crisis? Is it not obvious that by behaving in ways and transforming themselves into bodies that don’t conform, while asserting their moral superiority and imagined deep understanding of the world around them, those who embrace the doctrine of gender identity are stepping into oppression? Accusing ordinary Americans of racism, sexism, and all the other labels progressives smear on people—do we not see this for what it is: narcissistic collapse? Democrats tell those concerned with chaos, disorder, and the transgression of boundaries and the destruction of guardrails to calm down. Antifa is “just an idea.” Your distressed teenager is just seeking her “authentic self.” The drag queen is “family-friendly.” Indeed, Democrats embrace these ideas. This is their politics. It’s the party’s personality.
freedom and reason 