Is Donald J Trump a psychopath?

they actually really don't! especially if "charisma" is just consistently shouting horrible things xp

Their logical truth-value doesn't matter but their performative, even 'poetic' power does.

Trump is wildly inarticulate though

One of his most obvious characteristics

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

I mean this depends massively on who you are - compare the sentences of the black woman who unknowingly voted illegally (5 years) to those who actually conspired to commit election fraud

It rewards certain people for bad actions, incentivizing bad actions

So was Bush, but lines such as 'They misunderestimated me' or, by the same token, 'covfefe' have a weird force to them that borders on poetry, as disgusting as that may seem (then again, I don't think of poetry as having a meliorative meaning – it's more like another state of language).

2xp

they actually really don't! especially if "charisma" is just consistently shouting horrible things xp

yeah I take pretty big issue with the idea that Trump has "charisma"...he's one of the most deeply unpleasant people I can think of. I thought George W. Bush was horrible too, but I feel like I could have a fun conversation with him about, I dunno, baseball or whatever. I do think there's something to the idea that the more entertaining/iconic/SNL-worthy candidate always wins, though Trump did get 3M less votes

Fwiw that and charisma are one and the same as far as I'm concerned.

Bush Jr. seemed a bit dull and misspoke a lot, but Trump is on an entirely different level - dude does not understand a single thing that doesn't pertain to himself or TV news, and we've come to see that he gets absolutely nothing about business or real estate or any of the things he was supposed to be "good" at. I think about this exchange a lot:

‘Face The Nation’ host John Dickerson tried to get Trump to muse on former George W Bush’s comment on how the Oval Office was round and therefore had no corners to hide in – meaning accountability always sat firmly at the President’s lap.

However, Trump failed to spot the metaphor and took it just a bit too literally. He said: “Well, there’s truth to that. There is truth to that. There are certainly no corners. And you look, there’s a certain openness. But there’s nobody out there. You know, there is an openness, but I’ve never seen anybody out there actually, as you could imagine.”

resentment and—an overused word, i know—nihilism can be seductive, look at online trolls or even the less ideologically driven mass shooters. trump’s “poetry”—basically a delight in triggering people—appeals to that part of people. I don’t know if i’d call it charisma

He's not a smart man but he knows what an oval is.

it's not that he just didn't understand the metaphor, it's that he didn't identify that here was even a metaphor there, he never stops to think "that's a strange thing to say" and instead just starts speaking about the layout of the room

Trump and Bush have almost opposite personality profiles. It doesn’t make sense to compare them.

Doesn't matter, he's got plenty of memorable lines, starting with Fifth Avenue and 'very stable genius' and 'look, having nuclear' and…

Bush was a figurehead for entrenched interests. Trump’s been doing things for those people too, but he got to where he is in a different way.

that's true but Trump's "memorable lines" seem to come from a totally different place; in a way he is exactly like my 4 year old, when I tell him "you need to put your jacket on, you're going to get cold", his response is "no, I'm hot! YOU'RE cold!!" Bush had difficulty recalling common phrases ("fool me once...") and his sentences were garbled but he at least knows what the words mean. I know plenty of people who speak like Bush. Nobody I know is on the same planet as Trump

@ BradNelson I get that my comment about "anti-drone activists not believing in the thing they're protesting" was perhaps inflammatory, and regrettable, and doesn't at all reflect my true feelings. A more useful example would be to consider the widely-stated criticism that many white women participants in the Women's March 2017 were not actually marching for people less privileged than themselves, but were marching to celebrate their own privilege-- but my access to that discussion is "read-only".

I guess what I'm saying is their opponents were nowhere near as memorable. They struggled to turn their patterns of speech into micro-events. I mean, Trump is memerific and Bush kind of was too.

Trump actually lost though—to a super normcore candidate, hillary. He won on a technicality

As did bush. He lost to the dullest candidate in memory, al gore

If only that were true…

He got more votes

The electoral college is a technicality?

No, I know, it's just that it hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. Like when Canada's Conservatives got a majority government in 2011 with a score of 39.6%.

xp

Kind of. If we’re analyzing that the flashiest candidate is the one who enchants the public

Xp

He enchants the only public that counts, I guess.

Absolutely dumbfounded https://t.co/yFz3ZzfmKg pic.twitter.com/cSgGV9WI40

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) May 10, 2019

reminds me of when the mooch bragged about trump draining 3 pointers and regularly hitting putts in from 3 feet away, er, 30 feet away

He’s so gross

It's kind of amazing how there's nothing about him that isn't completely hateable. Like not a single redeeming quality. That takes real dedication.

Maybe he needs compassion. Being a narcissist of this level is a painful way to exist in the world—needing to bully children to protect your ego.

can we once and for all please stop giving an iota of a shit about the inner life of this man

like any abusive relationship, there's no way to predict how your actions will effect what he does, there's no model of his mind you can rely on

it would be easier if we weren't living in the nightmare of his outer life

Maybe he needs compassion.

Understatement of the eon.

"but obviously if the democrats are going to nominate someone to Left of Castro like Kamala Harris or Joe Biden i'll be forced to vote for Trump the golf cheat. again"

It’s not even just cheating at golf. It’s openly cheating and for no reason—with no ability to feel embarrassment. Nobody else acts in this way.

I liked that his Kentucky Derby take was "calling out cheating = political correctness"

silby otm. one of the things that depresses me about him becoming POTUS is all the wasted time/thought/energy spent by millions of people on someone who isn't worth 1 second of consideration.

Hadrian also otm of course

it's a drag that we find it necessary to psychoanalyze this guy, it's just a consequence of there being no other recourse, just helplessly watching this endless stream of shit go by

especially as all of these so-called checks and balances are revealed to be contingent on good faith...what else is there to do btw now and next November but marvel at the psychology, I really don't know

we find it necessary to psychoanalyze this guy

17 votes upthread for "It doesn't matter." Of which, one is mine.

I think it matters that such a person was able to rise to the presidency. It says something about our society.

Here's an article from today that kind of covers that although I am one of the it doesn't matter people in regards to Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/10/why-do-so-many-mediocre-men-rise-to-the-top

I like to occasionally psychoanalyze the massive nest of yellowjackets that have overtaken most of my guest bedroom. Why do they keep swarming and stinging the everloving shit out of me? What made them the way they are? Is there a way for me to stroll down the hall that will make them less mindlessly furious of my approach? It would really help my peace of mind if I could just plumb their intentions (even if it doesn't significantly lessen the chances of ultimately being horribly murdered by yellowjackets).

can we once and for all please stop giving an iota of a shit about the inner life of this man

"we"

also I know there's four years worth of US political scandal every day now, so there's no time to examine any of it, but that golf co-champion story came out months ago; it's not a new revelation

Hell, it's hard to juggle just the slew of golf-related stories demonstrating what a POS he is.