Is Donald J Trump a psychopath?

but he kept his businesses? and wasn't audited?

I think part of the antichrist's deal is that he's able to pull off feats just as astonishing as his opposite except they just leave everyone feeling like they need a shower and a fifth of vodka.

I thought some of this would be cleared up by mueller

Naively i see now

Note who the US AG for Southern District of NY was during these years. Giuliani.

Honestly, it's not the tax loss carryforwards that trouble me. Its the fact that real estate has more intrinsic incentives towards fraud than most industries, and Trump is clearly less principled than most people. I've no doubt his first 20 years in the business was rife with assessment fraud, but unlike some 800 fraudsters who had jail time during the 1980s S&L crisis, Trump carried on scot free.

That and then was the time to go through his dealings with a fine toothed comb, and Giuliani didn't.

was were rife

At his rally tonight, Trump says the government is unable to violently attack immigrants, someone in the crowd shouted "Shoot them!"

The crowd & Trump erupt in laughter & cheers. Trump says, "Only in the panhandle can you get away with that statement."pic.twitter.com/SgQd2OH9ti

— jordan (@JordanUhl) May 9, 2019

Really sickening.

I'm only able to sleep at night by reminding myself that Donald Trump will someday be the most consistently-defiled corpse in American history.

I know I can’t diagnose someone, but I do think there is something wrong with this guy that goes beyond the fact that he is part of a nihilistic political party (the GOP). Thereis a recklessness about how he has gone about his entire life that feels very deranged.

That’s why I stand by this poll. It’s not about if Trump is *worse* han someone like GWB—so far, he hasn’t caused as much damage. I think he really is sick.

In the sense of having a malignant personality disorder. Not trying to stigmatize the mentally ill, a group to which I belong myself. But I don’t know what other way to tak about a person who is bizarre and delusiona and relishes breaking out of social norms

The old word “evil” maybe.

I have literally never met someone anything like Donald Trump in my life.

Apologies for more trump posts

I think I'm finally convinced: that boy ain't right.

I don't know if he's a psychopath, but I think he's a kind of hydroponically-grown version of Americanism, a product of a culture. I've been recently referring to behaviour like his as Kissingerism, based on the tenet that "harming others, or creating chaos in the lives of others, is profitable for the self", which is not localized to America but does seem to flourish there more visibly

He’s kind of like a living portrait-in-the-attic of everything ugly about our society that we try to sweep under the rug, it’s true

Is that an actual quote from kissinger?

No, it's my own extrapolation based on Adam Curtis reporting in "Hypernormalisation" that Kissinger himself described his activities in the Arab World as "constructive ambiguity"

How is he not a psychopath? Because he has yet to murder anyone with a rusty hatchet? His behaviour is selfish, uninhibited, utterly devoid of empathy and self-awareness, even openly malevolent when it strikes his fancy.

I'd only argue against the designation inasmuch as he seems to stand alone as this refined paragon of sociopathy that your run-of-the-mill, meat-and-potatoes, Joe Lunchpail sociopaths can only gawp at in wonder as an aspirational model of what they might someday be if they really put their nose (or perhaps their neighbor's nose) to the grindstone.

Even if he doesn’t meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, he almost certainly has narcissistic personality disorder, as he is grandiose and delusional and demands adoration and becomes enraged when his ego is threatened. These are the classic symptoms and they are clearly observable to everyone every day. I feel like this matters because he is not being treated.

I have literally never met someone anything like Donald Trump in my life.

the only people who remotely compare to him are Tommy Wiseau and uh...Lavar Ball

I don't think in the history of human civilization we've ever seen a person this stupid and reckless find himself in a situation where no amount of stupidity or recklessness could possibly cause him to fail. Not only did he come up in a time and a place that absolutely coddles white idiots with rich dads, he seems to have benefitted from literally every lucky break possible.

I think labelling his behaviour as NPD and saying he "needs treatment" is ignoring the larger problem, which is that his behaviour is not-aberrant in the broader scope of American culture, and that he continues to have so many people who support him and "get it", so to speak. I've been deliberately and ruthlessly dicked-over by Californian after Californian, from leases to employment contracts to legal agreements and so on and so on. I have started to think that for Americans, growing up in a nation that so explicitly profits off the destabilization of other countries (via bombing or invasion or fomenting political upheaval in order to keep oil-prices down) has conditioned the American mind to hold, deeply, in their subconscious, that "creating chaos for others" is "profitable", to a point where this tenet is tapped into people's pleasure centres. I saw white Americans protesting drone strikes in Pakistan and thought "you're not actually upset about this. A part of you feels more secure because of these drone strikes. A part of you is overjoyed that you're now protesting to try and cover-up how safe this destabilization makes you feel". I don't think Trump is NPD. I think America is, across-the-board, a culture of dicking people over for profit and Trump is just less-good at being discreet about it.

he's a kind of hydroponically-grown version of Americanism, a product of a culture

Bruce Gibney's book "Generation of Sociopaths" i think is pretty instructive here (good book, def worth your time imho; caveat being that Gibney is a neolib VC bro so you gotta take that into account while reading).

But honestly you could scratch "Generation" and really expand it to "Nation"-- i.e., all signs m/l pointed to us eventually ending up here.

I think there is a grain of truth to that because America—and especially New York—is the epicenter of neoliberal capitalism, which prizes disruption and “flexibility” above all else. But i also think even in this environment, trump’s behavior is aberrant

xpost

iow flamboyant goon tie otm

yeah, I have been in a low simmer annoyance with the people thinking that Trump's personality is a complete anomaly. His circumstances might be, but all of these "bad" traits are pretty accepted and even nurtured in white men.

It’s rewarded but it goes against the grain of ordinary human instincts. The normal person doesn’t relish being seen as a heartless and reckless monster, even if they’d be admired for it

I agree in general his rise is instructive about how fucked up our country is and what kinds of things it incentivizes. But i still don’t see “trump” in the people i deal with day to day—my family, friends, whatever. Maybe my landlord.

fgti ruthlessly otm

xpost, I've worked with a lot Trump derivatives. He's exhausting for me, but it's a lifetime of Trumps all the way down so I have the stamina for him.

I'm kind of in between fgti and Treesh on this - I agree that Trump is America's underbelly personified, but at the same time I have never heard of a more shameless person in my life. I guess McConnell comes close but Trump is just on another level, he's living proof that certain people in this country are so privileged that they are not only unbound by law but by reality itself. Like getting on the phone with Putin and claiming that "he smiled when we talked about how there was no collusion", who else says a thing like that? Even Kim Jong Un wouldn't say that.

Despots across the globe are enjoying this moment of letting Trump do all their work for them, et al.

"he smiled when we talked about how there was no collusion", who else says a thing like that? Even Kim Jong Un wouldn't say that.

yeah KJU is a weird horrible person but Trump is a corny ass idiot in a way no one else is.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think fgti is saying that Trump isn't a psychopath. Rather, his mental illnesses are ultimately of little consequence when set against the broader canvas of Trumpism, which is but the collective cutting edge of a continuum of values that have always undergirded 'the American experience'.

Mmm, I mean...there's undeniably an undercurrent of depravity running through the history of this country, but it's often been in the service of something. Trump often just seems like chaotic evil for the sake of chaotic evil. Like someone who will torch the building they're in just for the thrill of seeing the screaming faces of those who die alongside him.

Yeah that's exactly what I'm saying.

Insofar as the ridiculous things Trump says that "even Kim Jong Un wouldn't say", I agree, but the point isn't the specifics of the statement, but that it's the audacity of these statements that is rewarded. I remember very specifically, ten days before the election, being in Louisiana and seeing Hillary ads that said, paraphrased, "this man (Trump) has said x, y, and z (incl. "grab them by the pussy"), is that really the sort of man we want ruling this country? Vote Hillary." I thought, you're missing the point, Democrats, this ad is actually working in Trump's favour; this "sort of man" is exactly the person people want to have running their country. It was this article in The New Republic that finally verbalized what I'd been feeling, intuitively, throughout the Trump campaign: https://newrepublic.com/article/151603/nihilist-nation-empty-core-trump-mystique and I've shared it elsewhere and pretty much agree with all of it.

I mean you could easily argue that everything he says and does is in service of himself - that he's utterly incapable of seeing the world in any way that doesn't relate to himself. He can't have a single relationship that isn't predicted on "do you like Trump". Truthering the Puerto Rico death toll because he thought it made him look bad kinda lays it all bare.

I think there are pathological and antisocial aspects to our society, which is why Trump was rewarded for a life of destructive and selfish actions. But i don’t think the average person or even the average white man fully embodies these traits fully the way Trump does. If that’s *all* our country was, there would be nothing to build on.

Nah but there's surely a lil bit of Trumpism in all of us, myself included

i defensively disagree

Agreed, fgti. In American politics (among others) charisma consists of creating a halo of events around your persona, of having unflinching performative heft. That requires audacity. And the most charismatic candidate always wins.

xps

For sure. We all have benevolent and malevolent instincts and need to consciously develop the former and resist the latter.

And like we shouldn’t build a society that rewards the worst parts of people but we’ve kinda done that

Agreed, fgti. In American politics (among others) charisma consists of creating a halo of events around your persona, of having unflinching performative heft. That requires audacity. And the most charismatic candidate always wins.

xps

― pomenitul, Thursday, May 9, 2019 7:59 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in america words mean absolutely nothing

i guess that's true

anyway i can't get on with a post that second guesses the true feelings of people protesting drone bombings, v weird way to make a point about how america loves corrupt daddy

Words do matter, but they're just another tool at the rhetorician's disposal.

This post is from 2 years ago, but I still occasionally think back on it.

https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/questions-about-rhetoric/

Lying should be more stigmatized than it is

I'm going with totally clueless. He's always wanted everyone to adore him but doesn't know how to do it. In his 7th decade of trying he finally stumbled upon being a far right wing agitator. He could have a good deal more followers even he wasn't so fucking clueless about how boasting about your own intelligence, wealth and prowess turns many people off. Likewise, insulting women and ethnicities prob got him some laughs and attaboys in the country club locker room but…

I mean I've known quite a few people who make it pretty easy to deduce that they consider themselves to be world class geniuses but they at least have had enough social sense to not just BLURT IT OUT.

Dunno about psycho, but him and his cronies are def sociopaths according to Chomsky:

I have no independent evidence about what is inside people's minds. In the case of the Trump administration, I simply think that they don't care. They are sociopaths.

https://www.salon.com/2020/10/17/noam-chomsky-if-you-dont-push-the-lever-for-the-democrats-you-are-assisting-trump/