March 22, 2017

The Composite Trump: Some Notes Toward Understanding Our President’s Level of Sanity

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Bob Somerby has been oddly disparaging about people who say that Donald Trump is a liar. Today he explains why:

Is Donald J. Trump a liar? Or could an accurate diagnosis perhaps be more troubling than that?…Is it possible that Donald J. Trump truly is some version of unhinged/crazy?…When Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott told Richard Nixon he had to resign, Nixon succumbed to reality. What would Trump do in a situation like that?

A mere “liar” would know it was time to go. Do you feel sure that Donald J. Trump would react like that?

We don’t feel sure of that at all.

Let’s roll the tape. Trump is vain. He’s peculiarly unwilling to learn anything new. He feels endlessly persecuted. His attention span can be measured in minutes. He’s paranoid over the slightest sign of disloyalty. He is vengeful. He demands constant attention. He makes up preposterous fictions to sustain his worldview and shield his ego from the slings and arrows of reality. He desperately wants to be liked by everyone. He’s domineering. His personal relationships are almost entirely transactional. He never laughs. He can’t stand people poking fun at him. He’s often unable to control his emotional outbursts. And he likes his steaks really well done.

Does that mean he’s unhinged? I dunno. No single one of these things is debilitating, but what happens when you put them all together? Back when I was a kid there was a super-villain called the Composite Superman. He had the powers of, like, 30 different superheroes, and apparently that was enough to drive him mad:

Maybe this is Trump. Being, say, vain and domineering would make him a bit of an asshole, but nothing more. But put all of his bizarre personality traits together, stir in the pressure of being president, and that might be enough to qualify him as detached from consensus reality. Who knows?

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