The Economy Minister and narcissistic rage

The Economy Minister’s reaction to my reports about his brothel adventures are a textbook example of narcissistic rage. I knew it would happen because this is exactly how narcissists react.

In public life, we saw it most notoriously with the extreme retributive behaviour of Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. They turn savage and lose all sense of proportion, oblivious to the fact that they are causing themselves even further harm in the pursuit of destroying those who caused them narcissistic injury.

Somebody asked me the other day how Cardona can face the camera and lie as he does. My response is that men like that do exactly the same thing to their wives, which is why they are more likely to have ex wives than wives, or no wife at all. It’s a process called gaslighting.

The wife confronts her husband with cast-iron evidence that he shared a hotel room with a co-worker, or that she has read his highly compromising email exchanges with another woman, and he will deny everything outright and then accuse her of being unbalanced, moving from that to constant, repetitive denial and deliberate attempts at causing her to doubt her sanity, judgement or ability to assess information and situations.

There is a reason why the Economy Minister and the executive chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology both have two ex wives.

With men, their public behaviour and their private behaviour is, especially in extremis, identical. The Chris Cardona who lies to the camera is the Chris Cardona who will have spent the past few years lying to one wife after another as he spends the afternoon in bars and the evenings and night in lap-dancing clubs and other steamy scenarios.

That’s the way it goes, which is why nobody believes him, especially not women, even though they may seek to defend him and justify his actions.

As I was thinking about how Cardona’s response is a manifestation of narcissistic rage, I saw to my surprise that a fellow columnist at The Malta Independent had the exact same reaction.

Chris Cardona: a very public manifestation of narcissistic rage