Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Trump's niece asked if he will run again. Hear her reply" video.
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Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.
Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?
Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie.
And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. Defying biology, even in the face of soaring coronavirus cases and mounting deaths, Trump claimed that the virus at some point is “going to sort of just disappear.”
The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives.
These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time.
But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow.
What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment.
For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.
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In an interview with the New Yorker, Tony Schwartz, the journalist who wrote Trump’s “The Art of the Deal,” said of Trump “Lying is second nature to him, more than anyone else I have ever met. Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true."
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent.
Schwartz — and other journalists who have spent extended periods of time with Trump — paint a much more disturbing picture. They describe a man constitutionally incapable of logic, moral reasoning or self-reflection.
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
There are some politicians who will say anything to get elected or reelected.
It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats. Or Republicans.
Some of them are going to lie. Maybe a majority of them are going to fib.
But to even suggest that anything Democrats have done over the years — or even to suggest that what other Republicans have done over the years — is on par with what Trump has normalized since he was sworn in is simply laughable.
Richard Nixon, the Republican president who was run out of office for covering up the Watergate break-in, was not as dishonest as Trump. Not even close. Nixon’s arc bends closer to “Honest Abe” Lincoln than it does to a serial liar like Trump.
Trump’s arc bends more toward James Tate, the Kentucky state treasurer who fled the state in 1888 with two tobacco sacks full of taxpayers’ gold and silver.
You'd trust Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff before you'd trust Trump.
Trump was given the “Lie of the Year” award in both 2015 and 2017.
The first award was not for a single lie, but was for the sheer volume of lies Trump told. PolitiFact said that 76 percent of Trump’s statements that it checked that year were “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
Many politicians make false and misleading statements when they are trapped or cornered or don’t have a better answer.
Trump on the other hand, lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies when the truth is a better answer. Trump’s first instinct is to lie.
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@user-fp4zn9yj8n
Trumpism is by definition, a shared psychosis.
A shared psychotic disorder is a rare type of mental illness in which a healthy person starts to take on the delusions of someone who has a psychotic disorder. For example, let's say your spouse has a psychotic disorder and, as part of that illness, believes aliens are spying on them. Trump convinced his followers that President Obama spied on him.
People with psychotic disorders have trouble staying in touch with reality and often can’t handle daily life. The most obvious symptoms are hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren’t real) and delusions (believing things that aren’t true, even when they get the facts).
Shared psychotic disorders can also happen in groups of people who are closely involved with a person who has a psychotic disorder (called folie à plusiers, or "the madness of many"). For instance, this could happen in a cult if the leader is psychotic and their followers take on their delusions.
The most obvious example of this is what happens in a cult, if the leader is living with a mental illness and transfers their delusions to the group. In a larger group setting, this might also be termed mass hysteria.
Scientific American asked Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist, to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, and what attracts his followers to him.
"TheReasons are multiple and varied. I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology.
When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals."
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
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@user-fp4zn9yj8n
A psychopath is actually capable of caring for someone other than themselves. A psychopath is actually capable of feeling empathy and sympathy.
Trump is an extreme narcissist, and a complete sociopath. He does not care about anyone or anything other than himself, and his own desires.
A Trump quote from 2004, in response to a Larry King Live caller asking him how he handles stress during a crisis. Trump: “I try and tell myself it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, like you do shows, you do this, you do that and then you have earthquakes in India where 400,000 people get killed. Honestly, it doesn’t matter."
Spoken like the true sociopath that he is. And Trump meets pretty much every diagnostic criterion of a sociopath..
● Manipulative and Conning:
They never recognize the rights of others, and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
● Grandiose Sense of Self:
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
● Pathological Lying:
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.
● Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt:
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, he has victims, and accomplices, who will also end up as victims. ( Cohen, Manafort, Stone, Flynn) The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
● Shallow Emotions:
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would usually upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
● Callousness/Lack of Empathy:
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
● Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature:
Rage and abuse. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
● Irresponsibility/Unreliability:
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
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