Book Demo, English, Non-Fiction, \"The Narcissist Next Door\"
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North American (General)Transcript
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when you're telling lies, it helps to be charming. Anyone can make stuff up, but if you want to be believed, which after all is the whole point of telling lies. You'd best know how to look honest and earnest and nice while you're doing it. It's a lot harder to do. People who don't like you or trust you. Take Lance Armstrong, the disgraced cyclist and confessed juicer who faked his way to seven Tour de France titles over a nearly 20 year career hectoring, abusing and even suing anyone who suggested that he might be taking performance enhancing drugs, which he was. That aggressive defense may have silenced some critics, but it only emboldened others who pursued him with an Inspector Javert like persistence, determined to bring the nasty ******* down, if only because he deserved it. Eventually a lot of people took part in that job. As 11 of Armstrong's ex teammates publicly rolled on him, testifying that all of the stories over all of the years were entirely true. When Armstrong finally accepted that the jig was up and embarked on the inevitable apology tour, he earned not a shred of public forgiveness. Instead, he found himself shunned and shamed, a bad tempered character who richly deserved his public banishment. The same was true of Richard Nixon, a man of black moods and stubborn grudges who stood in almost surreal contrast to his existential opposite the boundless lee charismatic Bill Clinton. Both men faced impeachment and both were guilty of the things they had been accused of doing. Clinton's misdeeds were far far smaller than Nixon's, but his case actually proceeded further to a full trial in the Senate while Nixon got out of dodge before articles of impeachment could even be voted out of the house. It wasn't shame that drove Nixon to resign. Though the underlying self loathing and profound insecurity that impelled him to commit his crimes surely contained an element of that. Rather, it was something closer to narcissistic calculation. His presidency was doomed no matter what, better to walk out than be carried out and preserve some scrap of historical dignity in the process. Clinton was short on shame too if he had had more of it, particularly the corrective kind of shame that stops people from doing things like cheating on a spouse when they've already been caught at it multiple times before. He wouldn't have gotten into his impeachment mess in the first place. But it's the glowering Nixon who slipped into the historical shadows while the sunny, seductive clinton, the man you want to believe is telling the truth. Even when every instinct you have is screaming that he's selling you a bill of goods, survived politically. The power of the disarming manipulator is evident everywhere In the entrepreneur who charms seven figure financing out of credulous investors with his tales of a sure thing pay off in the broker who sells you securities you don't really need and can't really afford, then promptly sends an email to a colleague boasting about the dog of a stock. He just unloaded on some customer whose name, frankly, he can't quite remember.