How Does Donald Trump Bamboozle and ‘Con’ So Many People?

For over 11 years, I’ve been pondering Donald Trump’s amazing ability to influence, ‘con,’ and control/misdirect others. To me, none of the accepted explanations fully explain this weird, frightening phenomenon. Literally thousands of pundits, reporters, and commentators have weighed in on this confounding subject, yet somehow no one seems to get to the heart of it.

So, I decided to take a big step back, simplify my thinking, and ‘get back to basics.’ Here’s what I observe(d).

1) Donald Trump is a modern ‘trickster’ figure. That is, he embodies all the trickery, deceit, and manipulativeness that any good ‘trickster’ utilizes and cherishes. He is cunning, corrupt, and an undisputed master of Machiavellian ‘doublespeak.’

2) Underlying his trickery is a profound lack of a functioning conscience. He appears to belong to a tiny, rare (thankfully) subset of humanity: the truly soulless, totally amoral human being. And as such, he has NO sense of shame, empathy, or basic human connection and caring.

3) Due to the above two traits, he lies and distorts the truth with abandon. Plus, he is often cruel, capricious, and abusive, since he has zero empathy. He constantly spins out his own paranoid, self-centered ‘alternate reality’ — one completely independent of facts, truth, and our shared reality. His intense narcissism leads him to believe and even proclaim he is “the most powerful man who ever lived” — and he hates and wreaks vengeance on all who doubt or oppose him.

Trump is both amoral and simple-minded

It’s actually quite simple. Donald Trump is not a complicated, hard-to-understand person. In truth, he’s quite simple-minded, and his thinking is primitive. Anything that helps or supports Donald Trump is ‘good,’ while anything that hinders or obstructs his ambitions and greed is ‘bad.’

Everything is personal and, no matter how small, is taken very personally. Everything. And he just loves to meddle in others’ affairs and try to control and dominate every aspect of life (that is, others’ lives, including even our allies and other nations).

But it’s one thing to want to influence and control others; it’s quite another to consistently DO it and be good at it. So, exactly how does Trump do it? What makes him so good at ‘doublespeak’ and sowing either intense loyalty or massive distrust and confusion?

In a sense, it all points back to his total lack of shame. He can lie, distort, and invent spurious ‘realities’ easily and effortlessly precisely because he has no sense of shame, which is a foundational requirement for honesty and intellectual integrity (both of which he lacks). I’m not saying shame is the only motive for honesty, integrity, and aversion to lying, just that it’s one potent prerequisite for moral behavior. And Trump clearly doesn’t possess this vital attribute.

Trump’s rise and growing power fulfill desperate people’s ‘power fantasies’

The question then becomes, WHY are so many people sucked in and duped by his obvious lies and manipulations? I’m sorry, but I have to conclude that only weak-minded, weak-morality people keep buying his twisted, self-serving BS. And if that’s the case, what does it say about us— a huge percentage of Americans?

The uncomfortable, horrific truth, clearly, is that no tyrant or dictator-wannabe flourishes without massive, ongoing support and buy-in from a large group of ‘true believers.’ Witness the slow (15-year!) rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany. Trump, too, has benefited immensely from such buy-in, in the form of his vast MAGA movement and an often supportive US Supreme Court.

Amazingly, Trump has also thoroughly coopted and ‘owned’ the entire Republican party, even former detractors (like the late Lindsay Graham) and naysayers. Again, how does he do it?

Sadly, it may come down to others’ naked self-interest and their willingness to comply or be complicit, in exchange for short-term gain — morality be damned. Most of the folks who’ve allied themselves with him and his self-centered ‘priorities’ likely suffer from similar deficiencies or afflictions — namely, selfishness, greed, and power-hunger — but to a much lesser degree.

In a sense, Trump embodies what they might want to do but don’t dare to do. Their (minimal) inner sense of shame or propriety still gets in the way of fulfilling their control/conquest fantasies — but Trump has no such scruples holding him back.

On a deep, semi-conscious level, many of his followers and ‘true believers’ probably envy and adore him for his no-holds-barred, bulldozing approach to life. If they could have and do all that he does and has, they’d likely love it.

Pathology, contagion, and the “Dark Alliance”

Back to the question: how does Trump manage to perpetrate all these horrors? It’s clear to me, now, that it’s due to an unholy, destructive mental and emotional alliance between Trump and his willing ‘believers.’ Thus, the responsibility for his reign of terror falls equally on him and us. He’d be nothing if we didn’t hand him power over us, our minds, and our morality (or immorality).

But there’s another factor I’d be remiss not to mention: Trump’s intense narcissism and psychopathology appear to be contagious and easily transmissible. His total lack of scruples and honesty can’t be fully transmitted to others, but these odious traits can easily be strengthened and amplified in others through constant exposure and repetition.

And, lo and behold, Trump has been in our faces and in the news almost daily for over ten years now. As an accomplished trickster and committed narcissist, he loves being in the limelight and commits frequent outrages to make sure he stays front and center in the headlines. Of course, being the president of the US helps immensely in this regard. Front and center. Always.

This means that over the past decade, many Americans have been strongly conditioned — some would say, brainwashed — to accept and even emulate Trump’s hateful, destructive pathology. And the entire GOP has now acquiesced to Trump’s takeover and ‘slow-motion coup.’

Yes, Trump is a true master of corrosive doublespeak. But in addition, many Americans have shown themselves to be willing mind-slaves who accept and even embrace all his lies and manipulations. Together, they have formed a potent “dark alliance” that ensures Americans — and the world — will suffer horrendous consequences for many years, and possibly decades, to come.

As the old saying goes, “The fish rots from the head down.”

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This post was previously published on Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs.

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