About 18 months ago I wrote a piece about Donald Trump being a malicious serial abuser. That article focused almost entirely on Trump himself, his horrendous character flaws, and his potent influence.
Today’s article will have a similar focus, to some extent — but I will focus more on the American people, and the deep character flaws, neediness, and emotional pain our love for Donald Trump reveals. It’s an ugly and terribly sad portrait.
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First, the man himself. Amazingly, MOST of our current utterly bizarre political situation can be traced directly back to the disastrous influence of one very malicious and abusive man: Donald J. Trump.
Our actual, factual national trajectory over the past 8 years shows conclusively that our societal systems — legal, moral, media, and political — simply can’t cope with a totally amoral, vengeful pathological liar like Trump. (As my wife often reminds me, “You just can’t win against liars.”)
In essence, he’s a ruthless mob boss, a loudmouthed brat, a sexual predator, the world’s worst ever sore loser — and a vicious serial abuser as well.
Trump IS a ‘genius’ — at gaming the system and evading accountability
It’s his dangerous “serial abuser” aspect that worries me the most. Trump is a very cunning and super-manipulative user, abuser, and con man. His entire life is based on using and abusing others and all the social and economic systems that support us — and he’s very good at it.
Somehow, he always knows exactly how to best game the system, hook his followers (prerequisite for a con man), evade our laws, spin the truth to get his way and/or incite his followers, or attack minorities to gin up white rage. And his ability to use the courts to gum up and effectively disable our legal system is truly astounding.
Famously, throughout his life (until very recently) Trump has successfully avoided major legal and financial accountability, even as he ripped off contractors in his employ, sexually abused women, lost many millions of dollars, perpetrated numerous bankruptcies, lied continually, duped investors, and hobbled our legal system by using endless appeals to delay rulings for so long that his accusers often gave up in disgust.
Becoming our president amplified Trump’s worst qualities
And that all occurred when he was a private citizen, before he ever became our president — and was (disastrously) handed almost unlimited power.
Back in 2016, after his unexpected election win vastly upped the ante, suddenly his chosen victims were not just his contractors, or individual women, or his creditors, but our entire nation and all its citizens!
Suddenly the whole country was “his oyster” — and he began an 8-year rampage that would tear our nation apart like nothing has ever done before … except for the actual Civil War. (And of course, many of his most rabid followers are now loudly calling for a second Civil War.)
Over the past decade, some psychologists and mental health professionals have repeatedly warned that Trump is a “malignant narcissist,” which is one of the most dangerous and anti-social personality types. For a malignant narcissist, everything and everybody exists only to serve or empower him, and he has no use for niceties like morality, compassion, or fairness — or the law, or our Constitution.
This amoral attitude and Trump’s underlying personality disorder were always problematic, throughout his life — but his amoral, narcissistic, and cruel personality didn’t become a truly catastrophic problem until he became our president.
A president is supposed to care about his/her country, support the law, and work to improve the lives of our citizens. But Trump doesn’t care about any of these things — at all. He is that very rare example (thankfully) of a totally amoral, utterly self-centered human being, who has no moral compass at all, and also no compassion or caring.
None. Zero.
All hail the abuser-in-chief
Trump became president thinking that the whole process was all about him and attaining truly unlimited power — and he gleefully set about breaking one presidential norm after another, and often skirting or even breaking the law as well (i.e. obstructing justice).
And all along, he’s had NO interest whatever in practical help for Americans, in social justice, or expanding the “American Dream” to be more inclusive.
No, with Trump it’s much more the opposite. Instead of working to unify and strengthen our nation, he spews hate, insults immigrants, foments white rage, incites intense divisiveness and even violence, and keeps trying to push the nation backward to a ‘great’ former time when White folks dominated everything.
Not only this, but Trump regularly insults, undermines, or outright attacks many of our most venerable institutions, such as our court system, our federal justice system, and the FBI. And things have gotten so crazily bizarre in this country that the GOP, the ‘former ‘law and order’ party, has totally succumbed to Trump’s wild ravings — and now joins him in his manic denunciations of the courts and the FBI!
All hail Madman Trump!
The abuser, the abused, and the totally lost
Given Trump’s proven track record as an abuser and shameless predator/manipulator, what are we to make of the fact that fully 35% of Americans adore him and hang on his every word and action?
Around the world, people in other nations are watching our endless Trumpian drama in astonishment (and fear), and keep wondering ‘What in hell happened to these Americans? How could they ever bring a man like Trump to power? And now, after all he’s said and done, how can they even consider re-electing him?’
How, indeed? The thing that most Trump supporters don’t seem to get is that where there’s a prolific abuser, there are also legions of abused — and that includes his followers, whom he constantly misleads, manipulates, and hits up for endless ‘donations’ (to help pay his enormous legal bills). They seem to believe they’re safe and strong, as long as Trump’s and their own anger are directed at minority groups like immigrants, pregnant women, or LGBTQ+ folks.
But they’re ignoring one crucial fact about Trump: being a total narcissist, he only ‘cares’ about people when they do what he wants, and will throw anyone under the bus if it suits his purposes. His followers — more accurately, his victims — believe he cares about them and their lives, when nothing could ever be further from the truth.
They are pathetically deluded, and relate to Trump in exactly the same way that a kidnapped hostage may begin to relate to his/her captor(s). It’s called the ‘Stockholm syndrome,’ and it involves identifying with and even coming to love/respect those who are hurting and abusing you.
Yippee, let’s all be amoral, racist, and cruel!
But even the ‘Stockholm syndrome’ doesn’t fully explain all of the horrific psychological underpinnings and effects of Trumpism. I’m forced to conclude that most of Trump’s faithful followers revere him precisely because he is such an amoral and vicious ‘strong man.’ Even further, they apparently want to be exactly like him, and be just as cruel, unaccountable, racist, wealthy, and powerful as he is.
Most of us are leading uneventful ‘lives of quiet desperation,’ and the spectacle of a wealthy reality-TV star ascending to the highest office in the land — and then thumbing his nose at the government he leads, the GOP ‘establishment,’ and the supposed ‘Deep State’ — has proven to be endlessly fascinating and attractive to many Americans.
Hard as it is to accept, I think it’s been shown now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that many Americans actually prefer lawlessness, racism, cruelty, and abuse — as long as they’re the ones flouting the law and perpetrating the abuse.
Abuse of other people (other races, other sexual preferences, other religions) is just fine — as long as White Christian Americans are the ones in control who are doing the abusing.
Hard as it is to accept, I believe many Americans are amoral, cruel, racist, deceptive, and deeply manipulative at heart — just like their abuser-hero, Donald Trump.
No wonder he continues to be wildly popular. No wonder he’s successfully running for president yet again — on a ‘platform’ built around lies, racist hate, and vengeance.
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Folks, the U.S. and many of its citizens are clearly stuck in deep, deep shit — with no apparent way out. There’s a cynical popular saying that “we get the government we deserve.”
Exactly. Exactly right. Damn it!
Let the vile American shitstorm … continue.
And then … Can we please, please, finally close this horrible chapter in American history?
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? | My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
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Photo credit: Rod Long on Unsplash