Ewald Dülberg: Self-Portrait (1917)

" … he sure seems clueless about how transparently he exposes his inner urges."

Woe be the leader without competent advisors. Those who go it alone and serve as their own coach have the fewest resources from which to draw. They must make much of it up, and nobody's imagination proves bottomless enough to adequately serve that need. Worse, though, comes when said leader considers themselves the smartest person in every room, for even if this belief were true, it would provide little benefit. Life is no more an IQ test than in is a race. Those who compete, especially those who compete with themselves, lose the most. Those for whom each decision becomes a competition probably have nothing left to lose. Our incumbent seems to suffer from these conditions. On those occasions when he listens to someone, he more often acts upon his misunderstanding of what they'd intended to advise. He usually swipes some notion out of context and then claims it is his original before swelling with a curious Smugness. It's a genuinely infuriating habit, an authentic abuse of power.

I suppose we each profoundly misunderstand the world in our own unique ways. Others tend to keep us honest. We can't usually stray too far into peril before a spouse or colleague nudges us back into alignment. Those who cannot listen or, worse, refuse to hear, tend to experience the most trouble, for life seems much more a collaboration than a solo turn. We would have been much better served if we'd administered those IQ tests to groups of people rather than to individuals, for this strategy might have helped us better see the source of functional intelligence. We each contribute a piece of the result, but it seems fundamentally unfair when we expect ourselves to contribute much more than that piece. Therefore, the incumbent's role cannot be properly fulfilled by a king, especially not a king who cannot listen to his advisors. Especially not a self-proclaimed king who specializes in Smugness.

There might not be any better way to encourage a dedicated opposition than by serving them your Smugness, for it is genuinely offensive. It's a way of taking more credit than is ever warranted. It is a thumb of the nose at any audience, public self-adoration. It might say most about one's ego strength or id and is best omitted unless engaged in as self-derision. Then and only then might it be considered acceptable. Otherwise, it only undermines.

That our incumbent seems awfully poorly socialized shouldn't surprise me, for he was evidently never house-trained. He earned his living, such as it ever was, by performing the rube without fully acknowledging the role he was playing. I'd bet that he never caught on to the actual game he was engaging in, essentially playing himself for the rube he believed he was playing everyone else as. I shudder when recalling those times when I got out too far ahead of my skis and attempted to demonstrate my knowledge only to disclose the depth of my misunderstanding. At my advancing age, I no longer encounter very many of these, but throughout my life, I would occasionally stumble into one of those blind alleys. I'd wonder how I'd worked my way through life and an educational system without ever understanding that particular topic, but I had. I would wonder if I really understood anything and wash down with humiliation my little lesson in humility. I've learned to preface my proclamations with certain cautions. I own my impressions without insisting that I necessarily deeply understand anything. I thrive in acknowledged ignorance.

Not so our incumbent, who labels himself a stable genius. This proclamation alone rather screams the opposite of its assertion. I might label this phenomenon a Trump, where a presentation screams its opposite. When our incumbent reveals his Smugness, he's actually displaying his ignorance. When he purports to feel proud of his accomplishment, we understand that he should feel embarrassed; we certainly feel ashamed for him then or ashamed that he can’t seem to experience shame. When he swells with self-importance, he's disclosing his anemic self-esteem. When he crows about cutting off some essential funding and thereby "saving" something, he's displaying his heartlessness, an absence he possesses no ability to sense in himself. If this emporer wears no clothes, the clothes he never wears must be self-awareness, for he sure seems clueless about how transparently he exposes his inner urges. He and his Smugness serve as a continuing embarrassment. He generates more jokes about his performances than he ever garners praise. But then, he's his own over-worked cheerleader. He doesn't seem to care how much genuine adoration he receives. He's fully capable of providing plenty for himself, even given his inflated needs.

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