This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “People tell me I’m being defensive, when I’m really only explaining the literal facts that happened. How do I do that without being called defensive?”
Examine your motives.
Why do you feel a need to explain facts to people?
Has someone asked you for those details?
If they haven’t, they will interpret your input as motivated by a personal agenda, often defensiveness.
Your facts may be necessary to defend an action or correct a misinterpretation, in which case, your perspective may be critical to ensuring that the clarity and accuracy of events are maintained so as not to negatively affect someone unfairly due to a misjudgment or biased conclusion.
What also often happens is that when someone does offer clarifying information that an abuser doesn’t want to be made known, they will attempt to gaslight the messenger with accusations like they’re being defensive.
If you’re constantly explaining facts and that’s causing many people to accuse you of being defensive, then that could be a compulsion you developed from an abusive environment where you were constantly disbelieved and have overcompensated for that accusation by feeling compelled to explain facts, whether they’re relevant or not to resolving whatever dynamic you’ve been caught up in.
What people tell you is a clue either to the behaviour of yours you’re not entirely clear on or a clue to their attitudes. There is no universal answer as to which it would be, but your best bet is to be mindfully clear about your actions and why you chose them.
Other people will always say something; often, that thing they say has less to do with you than it does about them.
Your environment may be one where you feel compelled to offer explanations to defend yourself while being told that you’re being defensive. If that’s the case, then it’s most likely an abusive environment, and some abuser is deliberately gaslighting you to make you feel insecure about yourself.
Only you can know what the truth would be in this case.
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How do you deal with people who belittle you and try to sound like they’re smarter than Einstein?”
I think it’s important to separate how one feels about the language a person uses to communicate with others and their expressions of intent.
If one is being condescending, it’s generally quite clear in their word choices and the subject they focus on when conveying their thoughts.
In other words, instead of focusing on the subject, they focus on the person, which, in this case, would mean you.
In a communication dynamic, a person’s estimation of a relative degree of intelligence between oneself and the other results in a subjective interpretation of the other’s intent. In other words, when people feel insecure and conversing with someone whose language choices are intimidating, they can often misinterpret the other’s intent.
They may feel that person is choosing “big words” to puff themselves up when that’s not their intent. It would be a misinterpretation of another’s actions due to one’s insecurity. It is important to separate one’s feelings from the interaction to ensure one’s reading of the dynamic isn’t coloured by one’s biases.
They may not be condescendingly treating them and merely use language they are most comfortable with when attempting to communicate with someone else. (As someone who has been accused of using pretentious language myself, I appreciate the opportunity to explain how my language choices are primarily intuitive and from an attempt at being as accurate in my communications as possible. I cannot speak differently any more than I can change my vanishing hair. It’s just who I am. Every one of us has a natural style of communication that works for each of us, and it doesn’t mean you have to “read between the lines” to ascertain what I “really mean.” — This brings to mind a favourite song of mine by The Animals, “Don’t let me be misunderstood.” –
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Often, a person isn’t “trying to sound like they’re smarter than Einstein” but instead chooses words they believe are the most accurate representations of their thoughts.
As mentioned above, their focus is the key to spotting the difference. If they focus their responses on you as a person while choosing obtuse language to try to confuse you, then you know they are being condescending.
It might help to know that when someone is condescending, they also convey their intimidation through the discussion. They may feel that the effort spent in communication is not worth their time, or their goal is to make themselves feel better at your expense. In such a case, you will know that whatever information they have to convey could be more credible.
A naturally intelligent and well-informed person is usually happy to share their insights with others in an agnostic manner — as long as the other party is respectful in their attitude.
You can see that everywhere here on Quora. Some brilliant people here patiently explain simple concepts in great detail because they want to share what they have learned. Sharing is caring in this context.
When a person behaves condescendingly, they’re not interested in sharing or caring about others and let that be known in many different ways, while condescension is just one.
Another example of disparagement is providing hints of insights and then turning the tables on the person they’re speaking to, informing them that they should know the rest, and filling in the conceptual gaps on their own. If they can’t, they imply something is wrong with their victim’s character.
If you are uncertain whether someone is condescending, the most effective strategy is playing dumb.
Seriously.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but it works as a strategy.
Straight up, ask them what they mean with a confused expression to make it clear you’re not following their words and piecing them together in a way that makes sense to you. Be sincere in wanting clarification, and that will allow them to reflect on their attitude.
By playing dumb, you can defuse their defence mechanisms. You can encourage them to re-evaluate their communications in ways where their internal defences are not on alert to bring out condescension as a dialectical weapon to (pre-emptively) defend themselves.
This means that condescension and abusive attitudes are generally all born of insecurity on their own, and they often occur through subconscious responses to the person they are interacting with.
That person may not realize they’ve been condescending or abusive, and playing dumb is like knocking the wind out of their defence sails.
If they can be assured you’re not a threat, they are forced to re-evaluate their communications and make an effort to focus on the subject at hand.
Ultimately, by playing dumb, you may gain their trust and develop a valuable pipeline to an insightful source of information.
If playing dumb doesn’t work, then you know their information isn’t worth the effort to parse. They’re too caught up in their egotism to share their insights and are best left alone.
This question as it was originally posted on Quora in its complete form is: Why do so many MAGA elitists come off as spoiled rotten, whiny and ungrateful babies who are in desperate need of a diaper change?
Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist, and his success at achieving such a high degree of public awareness and top of mind bolstered by all the corporate media driving him to the Whitehouse with their tacit support for his return to power is like a Midas Touch inspiring narcissists everywhere.
That’s why Elon Musk, owner of the world’s most enormous megaphone, fawns over the grifter in chief.
Donald Trump appears to naturally have what Elon had to pay $44 billion to have and with less fawning attention as he’s finding his audience of worshippers dwindling instead of doubling down in their support of him as a saviour equal to Trump. (That must also not be very pleasant for him because he is naturally much more intelligent than Trump.)
He’s like catnip for ego masturbators everywhere, and every single one of them is characterized by the image of a spoiled rotten, whiny, and ungrateful child. Anyone who has had any direct experience with a malignant narcissist, and chances are that it’s more than most realize because many still don’t get what that implies, will see the pattern in his behaviour and understand it for the malignancy that it is.
Powerless narcissists everywhere see him as the embodiment of their dreams of power for themselves, even on the smallest of levels, by permitting them the ability to act locally on their toxic impulses. It’s why hate crimes escalated while he was in office. His presence there was a license for every narcissist, malignant and covert, to feel justified in every destructive action they took against those they deem their enemies.
When we say a leader leads by example or when a role model sets the stage for all the performers to play similar roles, this is what is meant. Humans emulate acceptable behaviour. This is how we learn to socialize.
When long-repressed behaviours are allowed to let loose, they do precisely that. We saw that in spades on January 6th. — narcissists like the Q-Anon Shaman dood (Jacob Chansley), through to their flying monkeys, got into the acting out stage of rage against the system of their oppression.
Jacob even requested a special diet of organic food for him during his 41 months of incarceration, which was granted to him for “religious and health” reasons.
“Because of his “shamanic belief system and way of life,” eating food that isn’t organic or has “unnatural chemicals” would cause the client, Jacob Chansley, “systemic responses that are not simply discomforting, but debilitating and, notably, dehydrating,” attorney Albert Watkins wrote in a filing on Wednesday. Chansley had lost more than 20 pounds, and his condition was “declining,” Watkins wrote”
Narcissists don’t much care for anything that doesn’t cater to their self-centred sensibilities, and having a malignant narcissist at the top of the power hierarchy meant they were and are entitled to their entitlements.
A narcissist will expect the world to conform to them, and any form of compromise they are expected to make is perceived as an assault against them. Living in society is already a condition of oppression they must conform to if they wish to survive and succeed in life. They don’t want to conform to a world that does not cater to them, but they learn to do precisely that to get what they want.
MAGAts don’t care about anything beyond whatever serves their ego, and that’s why you can hit them with a mountain of facts and evidence. They’ll keep coming back with yet another fiction they can present to avoid the admission of defeat and score what they can conceive of as a win. Their egos will permit them nothing less because that risks a full-blown narcissistic collapse.
They would rather die than face that hit to their ego.
Their incapacity to admit error or publicly acknowledge a weakness is what makes these freaks a severe threat to democracies everywhere. This is how and why they destroy families everywhere.
They are psychological children trapped in adult bodies as a consequence of having their emotional maturity halted at a young age due to severe trauma.
There is no cure for them beyond addressing the cause, and that cause is a horrendous problem statistically represented by a whopping majority (70%-80%) of families being dysfunctional. That also spills out to statistics involving a mental health pandemic visibly affecting a minimum of one in five people today.
We must prioritize mental health in society to have any hope of solving our common problems and preventing another Drumpf catastrophe. Our only other choice is to wait for the next Drumpf to capture public attention, while the media will be much more prepared to ensure the oligarchs win complete control over the nation.
thotbag 