Outside the Beltway

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1. Michael Reynolds says:
   Wednesday, 14 January 2026 at 04:18

   It seems that as many as 10-20,000 Iranians have been gunned down in the streets, with another 20,000 imprisoned, presumably hangings to follow in many cases.

   Would ICE be able to pull off something similar in the US? Some police departments and some state National Guards would probably co-operate, as well as some right-wing militias. Would these forces gun down fellow Americans? IMHO, yes.

   OTOH, liberals can buy guns, too. We are a much bigger population and much bigger geographically as well. And many police forces would resist, as well as some National Guards. The deciding factor would be the US Army. Some military units would comply, some would not.

   Thoughts?

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2. Scott says:
   Wednesday, 14 January 2026 at 06:59

   @Michael Reynolds: As a retired AF officer, I have no idea. Practiced with a gun maybe twice in 20 years.

   I suspect people are people, in service or out. Most will go along with orders. Really depends on the people in charge. And nothing will change until they see the consequences and go: My God!, what have I done!

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3. charontwo says:
   Wednesday, 14 January 2026 at 07:17

   Apparently power can be an addiction, recent NYT piece about that. This can lead to a spiral of increasing displays of power, of dominance, just to get the addictive pleasure hit.

   “NYT Gift” gift link:

   Kets de Vries replied by email:

   It is possible to become addicted to power — particularly for certain character structures. Individuals with pronounced narcissistic, paranoid or psychopathic tendencies are especially vulnerable. For them, power does not merely enable action; it regulates inner states that would otherwise feel unmanageable.

   Donald Trump is an extreme illustration of this dynamic. From a psychoanalytic perspective, his narcissism is malignant in the sense that it is organized around a profound inner emptiness.

   Malignant narcissism is a combination of narcissism and psychopathology. Because there is little internal capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation, he requires continuous external affirmation to feel real and intact. Power supplies that affirmation. Visibility, dominance and constant stimulation temporarily fill the void.

   What makes this tragic and dangerous, Kets de Vries continued, “is that this dynamic is not playing out in the margins of political life but at its center. He is not the dictator of a small, contained state; he is occupying the most powerful position in the world, with consequences for all of us.”

   It’s not just Trump. The compulsion to simultaneously project power and demean adversaries pervades the administration.

   Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy and a homeland security adviser, thrives on assertions of domination.

   “We live in a world,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Jan. 5, “in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”

   Or take Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. Even before Trump took office, Vought fantasized in speeches about putting career civil servants “in trauma,” making their lives so miserable that “when they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

   After other examples,

   “Power, especially absolute and unchecked power, is intoxicating,” wrote Nayef Al-Rodhan, an honorary fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and the director of the geopolitics and global futures department at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, in a 2014 essay, “The Neurochemistry of Power: Implications for Political Change.”

   “Its effects occur at the cellular and neurochemical level,” Al-Rodhan continued.

   They are manifested behaviorally in a variety of ways, ranging from heightened cognitive functions to lack of inhibition, poor judgment, extreme narcissism, perverted behavior and gruesome cruelty.

   The primary neurochemical involved in the reward of power that is known today is dopamine, the same chemical transmitter responsible for producing a sense of pleasure. Power activates the very same reward circuitry in the brain and creates an addictive “high” in much the same way as drug addiction.

   Like addicts, most people in positions of power will seek to maintain the high they get from power, sometimes at all costs.

   I asked Ian Robertson, an emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College in Dublin and the author of “How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-Belief,” a series of questions in this vein. He answered by email.

   How is it possible to become addicted to power?

   “Power is a very strong stimulant of the dopamine reward system of the brain — which is the seat of addiction.”

   Does the addiction result in a need to keep exercising power in an increasingly domineering fashion?

   “Yes, a central component of addiction is increased tolerance — i.e., you need to increase the dose to keep the same effect. It can become an unquenchable appetite.”

   What are the personality characteristics that are associated with addiction to power? What needs are met for those addicted to power?

   “People (men more than women) with a high need for control and dominance over other people (and a corresponding fear of loss of control). The need for control is one of three basic motivational needs — the others being affiliation and achievement. Having power over other people satisfies this deep need.”

   In a Feb. 12 Irish Times article, “A Neuropsychologist’s View on Donald Trump: We’re Seeing the Impact of Power on the Human Brain,” Robertson described the frenzied opening days of the second Trump administration:

   Deports manacled immigrants, closes AIDS-prevention programs, starts and stops and restarts a tariffs war, vows to cleanse Gaza of its troublesome inhabitants and demands that all Israeli hostages be released by Hamas by midday on Saturday or he would “let hell break out.”

   This activity, Robertson continued,

   fuels an aggressive, feel-good state of mind, particularly in dominant, amoral personalities such as Trump’s. It also creates a restless, hyperactive state of mind, which, when combined with a feeling of omnipotence, fosters the delusions that you can snap your fingers and sort every problem.

   At the same time, when Trump’s grandiose plans are frustrated, it poses high risks: “When that doesn’t happen — when Gaza or Greenland can’t be bought or U.S. birthright abolished — this ramps up a hyperactive rage at being thwarted and escalates a flurry of even more frenetic and unmeasured responses.”

   It’s a long piece, lots more.

   ETA: And the main dude is now so cognitively impaired he no longer respects limits or thinks rationally.

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