I’m sure my Brutally Honest readers are perplexed by my lack of non-stop
evisceration of all things Donald Trump.
In fact, I’ve gone out of my way to avoid bringing the man’s name up if
I can help it, focusing instead on other subjects.
I’ve said nothing so far when
it comes to the so-called “Dreamers”, the children of people who came to
America “illegally”, and whether or not they should stay. I’ve said little about Trump’s apparent
obsessive fixation to completely erase everything his White House predecessor
did. I’ve said nothing about his
pardoning of abusive former sheriff Joe Arpaio, or the speculation that he
could pardon everyone working for him, including himself, over the Russia
probe. I’ve kept silent about the Russia
probe or how close it could be doing anything substantive to hurt Trump, or
what it is precisely about the probe that people are upset about. I’ve kept talk of his Twitter-tantrums to a
vague reference and I’ve said little about his latest apparent partisan twist
in working
with the failed Democrats.
There’s a very simple reason why... and that is because there is very
little about President Donald Trump himself that truly shocks or amazes me.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here, we have elected a narcissist to
the White House. And while that in and
of itself should serve as an explanation as to why nothing he has done or is
doing or will do will truly shock or amaze me, it appears that way too many
people can’t seem to fully grasp the situation.
They continue to act as though Trump is just another politician, and
thus are shocked at what he says or does.
Thus, it is time for little-ol’-me to educate you about just what the
hell we got ourselves into with President Trump.
Being a narcissist is more than just having an over-inflated ego and
wanting to put your name on everything.
Narcissists have a self-centered mindset, to a point where everyone and
everything exists as an extension of that person and work for the purpose of
glorifying that person. You are really
not an individual in the eyes of a narcissist.
You are like a disembodied limb; separate but still functioning for that
narcissist.
Imagine being on a stage where you are the director, the producer, the
writer, and the star performer, and everyone and everything on that stage must
take their directions from you.
Everything on that stage is subject to change as you see fit. You have full control over the story. If you don’t like the set, then you can order
the stagehands to change the set for you on the spot. If you don’t like the cast, you can re-write
the cast or get new actors on the spot.
Everyone is there at your whim and for the privilege of showcasing your
greatness as the lead character and star performer. And you know that no matter how the overall
performance turns out, it will be the most stupendous performance in all of history,
with record-setting attendance and rousing reviews, and nothing will ever
compete against it again.
This is how a narcissist sees things.
The world is their stage, and they are the writer, director, producer,
executive producer, casting director, and lead in the ad lib real-time
performance of themselves. There is no
real sense of “right” or “wrong” with that person other than what benefits that
person and whether or not it glorifies them.
If they benefit from it, or if it makes them look good, then it’s
“good”. Anything else is “evil”. Not just “wrong”, not just “bad”, but “evil”.
Now I know some of you are saying to yourselves “Nah, that can’t be true,
David! You’re talking about a
megalomaniac! You’re talking about some
sort of supervillain tyrant straight out of comic books. Most people don’t have the means to change
things that much!”
You’d be right in that most people that have a narcissistic personality
disorder are restrained by the limits of society and the limits of their
environment. They do not have the power
that they believe is theirs by birthright to make the changes that they want. So they have to take that power where they can
from family, friends, significant others, co-workers, and even mild
acquaintances. They have to scheme and
seduce and manipulate people to do their bidding. They have to lie and exaggerate and say
whatever they can to get those people to their side. And then they have to lie and exaggerate
again to keep those people in their grip.
This is what keeps most narcissists from being too much of a problem. They know that there are limitations to their
will. They know that they can’t do some
things that they want to. It doesn’t
matter if it is the law or a lack of money or because someone else is in their
way, most narcissists are limited in what they can do.
What makes someone like Trump different from your ordinary narcissist is
that he has spent a good portion of his life essentially without those
limitations. His money and his
connections have given him the means to do whatever he wants without
limits. It’s given him access to things
that most people in his situation would not have. He’s surrounded by people who continually
reassure him that he’s always in the right, he can never do anything wrong, and
if something is wrong, then it “can’t be” anything that he did or said, and,
besides, whatever it is can be fixed and made to go away.
Now, in business, that’s been an asset for Mister Trump. It’s allowed him to create a brand out of his
name and to use that brand to try to sell whatever he can. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, well, it’s never really “his”
fault. But as a candidate-for and now
President of the United States, that same narcissism has made him a chaos
figure.
Understand that President Trump is not your typical politician. (And, yes, he became a
politician the moment he announced his candidacy.) Your average politician knows that there are
limits. Trump does not. Your average politician has developed a
personal filter to avoid saying or doing anything that could cost them
votes. Trump has no such filter. He’s never needed one. In fact, his drastic refusal to filter his
thoughts through things like Twitter and through his campaign speeches and
rallies have been considered a strength for him and his supporters. Your average politician has to work within a
well-established rigid framework set by party bosses and (on
occasion) the United States Constitution. Trump does not. It seems like, to him, the government is just
another business that he has acquired, with incompetent executives (legislators) that just need to be better managed or else replaced. And, of course, he has to put his name on everything. Because, you know, he’s Trump.
Let’s get brutally honest here… everything that President Trump has done
so far is completely understandable once you accept that we are dealing with a
narcissist. Everything he does is not
meant for the benefit of America as much as it is to benefit himself.
Yes, there is “something wrong with him”, as
some people have said, but he’s not crazy.
He’s just a narcissist. He’s not
a “white supremacist”, as some
people have accused him of being; he is a self-supremacist. He’s quick to condemn Muslims because he’s
not one, and he’s slow to condemn racists and white nationalists and white
supremacists because they associate themselves with him and he really doesn’t
want to distance himself from anyone that glorifies him. He pardoned Joe Arpaio because Arpaio
supports him. That’s why he says there’s
“many
sides, many sides” when it comes to Charlottesville, but only two when it
comes to Islam; with him or against him.
Trump want his “wall” because that has become his “brand” issue, just
like his Muslim travel ban and his immigration “solution”. He knows that it gets the support of the simple-minded
who think in zero-sum terms and want equally simple solutions. That means he’ll do everything in his power
to get some kind of “wall” put up, and to get his Muslim ban enacted, and to
get those who are not in America “legally” gone. It’s all about validating his “brand”, which
is his image and that’s also textbook narcissism.
I have no doubt that Trump would want to deport Superman if he could,
because Superman is the world’s biggest “Dreamer”, having come to Earth, never
mind America, as an infant. No fault of
his own, but, hey, too bad. Gotta go
back to that blown-up planet of his.
Plus, hey, it was a Barack Obama program anyway, so it has to go for
that reason alone.
I’m also not surprised that Trump would “defer” the actual “Dreamer”
issue over to Congress, because then it would make the GOP leaders look bad if
they don’t somehow “save” those children of undocumented immigrants, not Trump. Again, it’s about image. It’s supposedly not Trump that is “letting
the Dreamers down”, it’s the GOP. That’s
narcissism.
Trump breaks agreements and treaties because it gets attention and then
he can take credit for “re-negotiating for a better deal”. Everything is subject to his
“re-negotiation”, because that has been part of the Trump “brand”. He has long portrayed himself as the master
of “The Deal”, so, yeah, he’ll exploit that at any opportunity and call for a “re-negotiation”
over any kind of agreement. And, yes, at
some point I expect that to include the “deal” called the United States
Constitution.
Trump is the simplest kind of partisan: with him or against him. There is no middle ground with him. That’s why he hitched his horse with the GOP
at first, and now he’s making deals with the failed Democrats. It’s not about party loyalty. The GOP hierarchy never wanted him in the
first place. Remember the “Never Trump”
movement? So it’s not about parties with
Trump. It’s about whether or not people
will work for Trump. Operative words
being “for Trump”, not “with Trump”. If
House Speaker Paul “Mister Budget” Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch “The
Bitch” McConnel can’t do it for him, then he’ll talk with the inept Nancy Pelosi
and the milquetoast Chuck Schumer. Anything
to get the attention on him and to get what he wants. And, again, that partnership will only last as
long as their usefulness to him does. Then
it’s back to name-calling and Twitter-tantrums.
Trump is quick to over-exaggerate his successes and his challenges,
because that is what gets people to his side.
He’s quick to dismantle everything Barack Obama did because people look
up to Obama when they should be looking up to him. He’s quick
to attack the media because he seems to believe that the media’s job is to
glorify him. He’s quick to attack
critics and attack people that fail him and go after anything that could make
him look bad because that is what a narcissist does. It’s all about making Trump look good.
Correction: it’s about making Trump look great. And, by loose association, making America
look great. Again.
And now the punchline: even our misunderstanding of Trump plays right
into his hands. As long as the media and
the so-called “political experts” consider Trump to be or capable of becoming
“just another politician” or even try to behave as something that he has never
shown signs of being, then they will continue to be outraged by his actions and
his antics. They will continue to lose
their minds over Trump’s Twitter-tantrums and what he links and what he says off-the-cuff
on campaign speeches. That means that people
will continue to talk about Trump, and that will continue to feed his
narcissistic need for attention, as well as his own paranoid assertion that
people are “out to get him”.
Like it or not, we are all stuck with Donald Trump as President of the
United States until at least the year 2021.
And maybe even longer than that if certain people do not get their acts
together. All of the fantasies of
impeachment or removing him through the
25th Amendment are just that, fantasies. The idea of replacing Trump with the
Vice-President is just an idle fantasy. It
won’t happen with the GOP in charge, and it sure as hell won’t happen should
the Democrats get control after 2018.
The only thing that we can do right now is understand just what President
Trump is and why he does what he does and then not play into his game. Don’t be shocked or surprised or amazed by
what he does or says. Be shocked or
surprised or amazed that more people don’t understand why, or, even worse, buy
into it.
The old saying holds true here: knowledge is power. It’s high time that we all bone up on some concerning
the guy in the White House, or else we will all be playing his game.
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