by Bill Eddy
As of this writing in 2019, the government of Italy is struggling to agree
on leadership and policies. Apparently anger at the establishment, stoked by
Berlusconi for years, does not seem to provide a reality- based set of policies
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94 Part II: The Fantasy Crisis Triad Worldwide
or focus. Fantasy crises seem to have their limits when the reality of over-
turning the status quo starts to settle in.
It’s also interesting to note Berlusconi’s highly narcissistic and aggressive
personality, which helped him become a real estate and media mogul, drove
his multitude of false promises, his bitter attacks on other politicians, his
control of the media, and his many grandiose statements about himself. Did
he have sociopathic traits as well? His conviction for tax fraud and allega-
tions of many other crimes suggest that he did. All of these characteristics
appear to be similar to those of Donald Trump in the United States. Will the
outcome be the same? Only time will tell.
5 5 5
Conclusion
All of these national leaders appear to be Wannabe Kings, using fantasy
crises to gain power, while villainizing vulnerable groups of people specific
to each one’s country, and playing the image of a hero—a charming strong-
man who can talk for hours on television. In fact, they own, control, or influ-
ence much of the television media.
Will these HCPs succeed in the complete takeover of their governments
and lead their countries into war against their fantasy villains? Only time
will tell. But if they have narcissistic and sociopathic personalities, they are
unlikely to stop in their quest for unlimited power. Others will have to stop
them, if their voters can’t or don’t want to.
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8
HERE AT HOME:
FROM MCCARTHY TO NIXON
TO TRUMP TO ___________?
The United States has had several flirtations with HCP Wannabe Kings
throughout the history of our democracy. In the past century, they have
received a surprising amount of support from potential voters.
Americans have long had an authoritarian streak. It was not unusual for
figures such as Coughlin, Long, McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the sup-
port of a sizable minority—30 or even 40 percent—of the country.197
Father Charles Coughlin was an immensely popular anti- Semitic Catho-
lic priest in the 1930s who was openly opposed to democracy and questioned
the value of elections. His nationalist radio program reached 40 million lis-
teners a week, and he packed stadiums and auditoriums with people who
wanted to hear him speak.
Huey Long was a Depression Era governor and then a senator for Lou-
isiana. He was known for being a demagogue with dictatorial tendencies.
He used bribes and threats to get what he wanted from legislators, judges,
and the press. He called for the redistribution of wealth and his movement,
Share Our Wealth, had almost eight million names on its mailing list.
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In 1968 and 1972, Alabama’s governor George Wallace ran for president
on a platform that opposed school integration and appealed to working-
class whites’ sense of being left out of the nation’s economic progress. He
made significant inroads into the Democratic Party until an assassination
attempt halted his candidacy in 1972. At that time, he had a million more
votes than George McGovern, who became the party’s candidate and who
subsequently lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon.198
Although it appears that all the Wannabe Kings in this chapter are on
the political right, there have been HCPs on the left as well. Remember, it’s
not about the politics; it’s about the personalities. A notable example was
Jim Jones, a revolutionary preacher and leader of the People’s Temple in
the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s. He took 900 followers with him to
Guyana in South America to create a socialist utopian community. Unfortu-
nately, his paranoia got the best of him, along with his apparently narcissistic
and sociopathic tendencies, and he led his followers into the largest mass
murder- suicide in American history.199
Joseph McCarthy
The most widely known and popular authoritarian politician in America was
Joseph McCarthy. He was a US senator from Wisconsin from 1947 to 1957.
McCarthy’s Early Years
McCarthy grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. One of nine children, he was
shy but “favored by a protective mother. ”200 In his twenties, he became a
lawyer and went into politics. Although originally a Democrat, he lost his
bid to be a district attorney and changed his party to Republican and went
on to become the youngest judge in the state. However, he apparently lied
during the campaign and said his opponent was much older and that he
was younger than he actually was. Apparently, his pattern of lying in poli-
tics was already established by his twenties. He was involved in at least one
suspicious case as a judge, but he was eventually elected as a senator for
Wisconsin.
High- Conflict Personality
McCarthy was at first a quiet and undistinguished senator. But apparently
he had lied about his record during World War II and was also involved in
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a bit of tax fraud, so he decided he needed an issue “to distract attention
from his affairs.” In 1950, he settled on communism, to exploit American’s
fears of a Communist takeover. When World War II ended, Americans were
concerned about the spread of Communism because Russia and China had
become Communist. In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea—only to
be pushed back with the help of the United States. The Cold War was in full
swing. He certainly fulfilled the Target of Blame aspect of a high- conflict
personality as well as a possible sociopathic personality given the extent of
his lying and willingness to destroy people’s reputations for his own benefit.
Fantasy Crisis
Although people were somewhat worried about Communism, McCarthy
amped up the threat dramatically, sparking an explosion of anti- Communist
paranoia aimed at promoting his own influence. McCarthy claimed, without
any evidence, that there were hundreds of Communists—every one of them
disloyal to the United States—working undercover, especially in the federal
government and in Hollywood.
Fantasy Villains
To anyone who would listen, he insisted that these spies needed to be rooted
out—and that no one was doing enough in that regard. McCarthy stepped
into the imaginary breach and took charge as America’s self- appointed
scourge of Communism. He accused innumerable people of disloyalty,
hauled in thousands of ordinary citizens for questioning, and demanded
that US government employees go to excessive lengths to prove their devo-
; tion to their country.
Thousands of people, especially in government and the film industry, lost
their jobs because of McCarthy’s efforts. Many were blacklisted from their fields
for years or decades. McCarthy was extremely media savvy and used the new
medium of television to boost his visibility in many American homes. He kept
the country spellbound by holding televised hearings in the US Senate. In these
hearings, McCarthy aggressively questioned people about their ties to Com-
munism and their relationships with other people who might be Communists.
Fantasy Hero
Eventually McCarthy became the most powerful and visible person in Con-
gress. Many elected officials feared him and what he could do to them. In 1950,
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McCarthy claimed that he had a list of over 200 US State Department employ-
ees who were “known Communists.” There was, of course, no such list. Never-
theless, the claim sparked nationwide hysteria. McCarthy refused to provide
the names of any of these people and was unable to produce any coherent or
reasonable evidence that Communists worked at the State Department.201
One of McCarthy’s most high- profile supporters was Richard Nixon. As
vice president during Dwight Eisenhower’s first term as president, Nixon
endorsed Senator Joe McCarthy’s wild witch hunts. Nixon shifted his posi-
tion only after McCarthy slandered Eisenhower and became a liability to the
Republican Party.202 Although McCarthy scared millions of Americans, he
was able to consolidate enormous power and make his own name a house-
hold word. Nevertheless, during his entire anti- Communism campaign,
McCarthy successfully fingered exactly zero Communists.
High- Conflict Media
Just as Hitler was the first politician to use the radio to connect intimately
with ordinary people in their homes, McCarthy was the first politician
to use television in a similar intensely emotional, repetitive manner. He
dominated television news for four years. But his power collapsed in
1954 when he accused the US Army of coddling known Communists. He
overreached.203
Televised hearings of his Army investigation let the American people
see his bullying tactics and lack of credibility, and he quickly lost support.
Eventually, McCarthy’s own political party turned against him. In 1954, the
Senate censured him for his aggressive tactics, and all but one senator voted
against him. This vote “effectively end[ed] his career, ”204 but he still had popular support until his death from likely alcoholism in 1957.
At the height of McCarthy’s political power, polls showed that nearly half
of all Americans approved of him. Even after the Senate’s 1954 censure of
him, McCarthy enjoyed 40 percent support in Gallup polls.205
It appears that his emotional repetition was in isolation because of the lack
of any competing voice or television broadcasts. Television was new in the
1950s, so it had the authority of a single voice. Since McCarthy was a senator, he
obviously was someone to be highly regarded, and no other television station
was going to criticize him—especially regarding the hot topic of Communism.
This allowed him to gain a tremendous following by focusing so intensely
on his fantasy villains. It was high- conflict drama from start to finish. For four
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years the country was captivated and many careers were ruined. When the
nation finally caught on to the dangerousness of people like him, they called
it McCarthyism. His aggressiveness and his lack of empathy and remorse
in publicly and pointlessly humiliating people appears to fit well into the
Wannabe King pattern. He is a classic example of promoting a Fantasy Crisis
Triad using the latest potentially high- conflict medium—television.
5 5 5
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon was president of the United States from 1969 to 1974, when
he resigned from office during his second term. He was faced with likely
impeachment charges because of his role in the Watergate scandal involving
a break- in to the Democratic Party’s headquarters during the 1972 election.
Nixon’s Early Years
Much has been written about Richard Nixon’s difficult personality. He was
named after King Richard the Lion- Hearted, and three of his four brothers
were also named after kings (he was the second oldest). His mother was
emotionally unavailable for a lot of his early childhood due to illness and
caring for the other children, so he often stayed with relatives and appar-
ently cried a lot. At the same time, he also showed a tendency toward self-
reliance, a quiet seriousness, and a precocious maturity.
He was a quick study with a remarkable memory. He could read before
he started school and read over thirty books on his own in first grade. He was
known to enjoy reading rather than playing outside. His parents encouraged
his intellectual specialness, although his father could also be very mean-
spirited and physically abusive.206
High- Conflict Personality
Some authors say that his childhood of emotional deprivation and special-
ness led to him developing a narcissistic personality.
We will now observe the manifestations of a narcissistic personality in
Nixon, providing examples of how he repeatedly attempted to prove to
himself and others his right to be “number one” and how he denied his
dependency, rage, and envy. At times when the reality of his environment
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or his own internal turmoil threatened his grandiosity he would feel
humiliated, enraged, envious, physically ill, paranoid, and willing to strike
back at “unloving” others or dangerous things in order to reaffirm his
grandiosity.207
How much of his personality was inborn and how much was due to his
early childhood is hard to know. Did his king- like name and upbringing
make him want to be in charge and to dominate others? We will never know.
But he appears to have had the makings of a brilliant politician who was
brought down by his own highly aggressive personality.
Another important aspect of his self- defeating personality was his con-
stant lying. In a psychologically informed biography, Fawn Brodie explained:
Nixon lied in matters both important and trivial. She stated that “Nixon
lied to gain love, to store up his grandiose fantasies, to bolster his ever-
wavering sense of identity. He lied in attacks, hoping to win. . . . And
always he lied, and this most aggressively, to deny that he lied. . . . Finally,
he enjoyed lying.” She gives examples of Nixon’s lying in matters large
and small: He lied about his college major, about his wife’s first name
and birth date, about his own secret slush fund in the 1952 Presidential
campaign, and in the Watergate cover- up.208
Fantasy Crisis
Nixon ran for pres
ident in 1968, after serving as a congressman and a US sen-
ator from California. At the time, Americans were deeply concerned about—
and deeply divided on—two major issues: civil rights and the Vietnam War.
During the 1960s, the US was being torn apart by protests, marches, and
riots. After major civil rights laws were passed in 1964 and 1965, many state
and local governments in the south refused to enforce them.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, America was fighting a war for reasons that
many people could not comprehend. Over 30,000 Americans had already
died by 1968. Although the Vietnamese saw this as a civil war, many Amer-
ican politicians sold it to their countrymen as a fight against Communism.
As a law- and- order presidential candidate, Nixon was able to reassure
Americans that he would push back against the forces of chaos and change
what was happening in the country. For example, one essay he wrote in the
lead- up to the election year was titled: “If Mob Rule Takes Hold in Ameri-
ca—A Warning from Richard Nixon. ”209
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Fantasy Villains
Nixon’s law- and- order platform was a brilliant catch- all for numerous vil-
lains. Depending on what scared a particular person, “chaos” could be a
reference to protestors, especially students; to civil rights activists and advo-
cates; to non- white people in general; or to Communists. (Recall Nixon’s
earlier support of McCarthy.)
Fantasy Hero
Nixon’s implied stance against civil rights also enabled him to win the votes
of many southerners, who felt betrayed by the prior president’s (Lyndon
Johnson’s) “concessions” to racial equality with the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Also, there had been riots in the inner cities
in the 1960s and the war in Vietnam was gaining protesters. In 1968, Nixon
ran as a Republican antiwar candidate, stealing the Democrats issue. He
showed ads with war footage and “Nixon’s calm voice promising to end the
war and correct the mistakes of the old set of leaders who were responsi-
ble. ”210 Of course, Nixon didn’t end the Vietnam war, he even expanded it
secretly into Cambodia.211
But Nixon won the presidency in 1968 and again in 1972. As president,