Thread by @Hal_Duncan

It's a bully's smugness. Simple as that. As a narcissist, he's always already performing superiority & scorn, the triumphalism of having already won, and when he's using that to recruit followers, they get to feel the same gleeful exultation over whomever he's targeting.

I don't really get why this is mystifying, tbh. It's written all over his face every speech he gives, and it's written all over the faces of the audience members as they lap it up. It's transparent that he's crowing, gloating over his opponents as if he's already won.

And it's transparent that they're responding to his offer to them to gloat along with him, to revel in that same egoistic rapture, as the accomplices-cum-acolytes of any common-or-garden bully. It's not that complicated.

There's something horribly fascinating about the mental mechanics, the complete lock the malignant narcissism has over him whereby unless he's experiencing narcissistic injury, that triumphalist gloat is basically all he's capable of feeling, all the time. But it's no mystery.

And English may not have as good a word as "schadenfreude" for the blend of pride, scorn & glee that he's inviting his audience to revel in along with him, building to rapture for anyone willing to surrender to their own vicious ego, but the concept of sadism is commonplace.

I hadn't thought of actual endorphins being involved, but yeah, that experience is basically going to be a hit for the audience, so it's liable to have a psychologically addictive quality, a buzz that'll make them wanna come back for more.

In my own personal Neo-Spinozan (kinda?) theories on stance, I also suspect there's a dynamics in play with what I'd call "surl" (targeted animus) liminally recognised as vicious, spurring a sense of shame that's quashed from awareness by doubling-down on the triumphalist egoism.

That is 100% theoretical though, from someone coming at it with just a philosophically-inclined novelist's attempt to grasp the dynamics of character. I freely admit I'm no actual psychologist. But I suspect a warping of corrective affects into denial exacerbating the sadism.