"Make White and Male America God Again": The Psychology of Playing God Behind the Racist and Sexist Insults against Harris
To Matter, or Not to Matter, That Is the Question
From Trump’s rants of “She’s crazy” and “dumb as a rock” to Rep. Burchett’s “She was a DEI hire” to Vance’s doubling down on his dismissive “childless cat lady” comment, the insults hurled at Vice President Kamala Harris have one goal in common: to portray her as not mattering. The insults not only distort reality. They deny it. Her sanity and smarts are said not to exist, hence they should not matter. Her success and accomplishments are said not to be earned, hence they should not matter. Her womanhood and humanity are not lived the way an ultraconservative white male sees fit, hence they should not matter. Such personal attacks aim to completely invalidate her as a person and, with that, her right to power. At the same time, those who throw these annihilating putdowns inflate their own claims to power or the power of their chosen leaders to absolute levels. They are playing God, so to speak. Why would anyone do this? Let me provide a psychological explanation.
Portraying someone as not mattering is an attempt to basically annihilate them existentially: to treat them as if their existence does not matter. The use of this rhetoric has been ramped up to a high pitch against Harris since she began to run to become the first woman of color to be President of the United States. It is reminiscent of the invalidating “birther” tactics lodged against Barack Obama by questioning whether he was born in the US when he campaigned to become the first African American US President. Trump stoked a similar birther conspiracy theory against Harris. The racist and sexist overtones of the insults against Harris are not even lost on high-ranking Republican politicians fearing that such personal attacks could backfire.
What is driving this annihilating rhetoric? While Trumpist politicians and pundits defending these attacks see them as a fair strategy to defeat an opponent, psychologically nobody who feels really secure enough in themselves and confident about their policy positions needs to treat someone as if they didn’t matter. At the most profound level, what drives this annihilating rhetoric on the part of those hurling these insults are fears of insecurity and not mattering and of losing the privileged inflated power meant to counter these fears. Psychology can help us understand these dynamics better.
Heinz Kohut, the pioneer in the psychology of narcissism (called self psychology), explained that people aggressively act as if they are omnipotent (play God) when, deep down, they have developed fragile self-esteem and a sense of heightened insecurity because they feel ashamed about not being perfect in the eyes of others and themselves. They experience this as a narcissistic injury. This leads to narcissistic rage when people they look up to in early life disappoint them and do not value them as absolutely as they want to be valued to counter the shame. Group dynamics can provide an often dangerous outlet to reestablish self-esteem through revenge for the experienced narcissistic injury by identifying with a cult-like leader and group who feel similarly narcissistically injured and by treating those designated as “others” as not to be esteemed.
The deepest sense of insecurity stems from the fear of being nothing or nobody, of ultimately not mattering. When this fear is not dealt with by coming to terms, in the context of trusting relationships, with one’s own human limitations (including the inevitable reality of one’s own future death), a harsh, omnipotent façade can serve to cover up the often unconscious heightened sense of insecurity and fear of not mattering.
Racism and sexism are such omnipotent façades. They attempt to farm out the sense of not mattering to others. Psychology calls this process projection, which can be imagined as a lens through which one sees the world. If one feels that one does not matter, one sees others through that lens and believes the non-mattering lies outside, when in reality it comes from our own sense of not mattering. At the same time, one deludes oneself into being the opposite of not mattering, namely super special - often to “God.” “God” is then nothing but an image of one’s own grandiose view of oneself, one’s group, or one’s leader. This is what I call a violent God-image. This is the kind of “God” fueling the cult-like conservative white evangelical support for Trump. This “God” is used to wage war against others by attempting to annihilate their significance and by controlling them in a master-servant relationship where the masters act as God-like or God-ordained. Fantasies of theocracy emerge from this, as documented very well in the new movie God and Country (more on this in a future essay).
The Abolitionist movement to end slavery, the Civil Rights movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement have challenged this dynamic by pushing back against the bigoted projection of not mattering upon Black people. The various groups of the Women’s Rights movement have challenged this dynamic by pushing back against the sexist projection of not mattering upon women.
The prospect of having in Harris a Black woman, that is, someone from groups upon whom a large part of the population for centuries has projected their own fear of not mattering, to become the politically most powerful or significant person in the country, throws the heretofore privileged people back on their own sense of insecurity. It deflates the inflated sense of power that serves as their defense against the fear of not mattering. The annihilating insults against Harris aggressively defend against this deflation of power. The so-called Make America Great Again movement employs both racist and sexist projections to reestablish what would better be called Make White and Male America God Again.
What can be done? As a therapist, sociologist, and scholar of religion, I will highlight a couple of recommendations.
First, for those who are targets of projections of insecurities by people who ragefully play God, it is important not to fall into the trap of feeding into those projections by being defensive about one’s ability or character or by responding in kind with personal attacks. Psychology calls this feeding into projections projective identification because it is a kind of identification with the projection. It typically backfires and gives the attacker more power. The best way to handle such projections is to hold onto one’s own power and stay focused on the actual issues at hand. In politics, those would be policy issues. Highlighting how one’s own policies will effectively address the needs of the electorate and how those policies would differ from the other person on the merits is the best way to assert one’s mattering and power.
Secondly, for those projecting their insecurity out by insulting others, it is important to realize that denying, deflecting, or being ashamed are not the only ways to manage the sense of insecurity and fear of not mattering that is part of being human. Since God is often invoked when this insecurity is covered up aggressively, a story from the Bible can be instructive. Genesis 2:25 portrays the state of “paradise” (what humans are meant to be and can be on earth) as one in which people are aware of their nakedness, that is, of their vulnerability or existential insecurity as humans, without being ashamed of it. Our vulnerability can be the place where we support each other rather than put each other down or annihilate each other (whether through words or actions). We do not have to handle it as in Genesis 3 by being ashamed in front of each other, by playing God (as the symbol of the “serpent” cunningly urges humans), or by using fig leaves of insults to detract from our vulnerability. Nor do we need to handle it by competitively annihilating each other, as in the Cain and Abel story in Gen. 4 (see my interview on racism and God images).
Finally, human vulnerability or existential insecurity presents an opportunity to work collaboratively rather than omnipotently to create policies that address human needs at home and abroad. Starry-eyed? Not at all. We are capable of much. Using science, we have sent people to the moon and collaboratively to the International Space Station. Using psychological insight and, if desired, therapeutic interventions, we can plumb the depths of our psyche and deal constructively and respectfully in our human relationships. This requires our humility, maturity, and willingness to do so. Is our shared humanity not worth it?