Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Key for Democrats: Expose Trump as Weak, Thin Skinned



As noted in a number of posts, psychologists have described Donald Trump as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder - a trait he shares with dictators of the past such as Hitler, Stalin  and others.  This disorder causes him to be totally self-centered and dangerous due to a never ending desire to inflate his image and to lash out at those who question him or, worse yet, expose him for the fraud that he is.  Being a foul tempered narcissist does not make one strong.  Instead, it shows severe weakness - something the Democrats must expose between now and election day so that the elements of the ignorance embracing  right will awake to the fact that Trump is not the strong leader they think he is.  Rather, he is a grown version of a temper tantrum afflicted child.  A piece in Politico looks at the danger Trump poses to America and the world and the need to expose him.  Here are highlights:
American presidents get insulted and abused and lied about more than anyone on earth. They don’t have the options of thin-skinned dictators who jail dissidents and close newspapers. They have to take the attacks and do their jobs, or they can’t function. Worse, if they overreact and try to get even, they become downright dangerous.
That is why it would be so reckless to elect Donald Trump president. Nothing is more dangerous than a weak man with power, and Trump is weak. Very weak. He can’t take the pain of arguments and evidence that contradict his self-image.
If Trump can’t control himself when he gets bad press on a charity event, what would he do if a U.S. fighter pilot were downed in a skirmish with the Chinese? Would he escalate to prove he is a winner—putting more lives at risk to save his self-image?
Presidents need to take the heat and stay cool.
Trump’s self-description can’t be changed by the facts because it’s not driven by the facts; it’s driven by his emotional needs. It is how he needs to see himself and how he needs you to see him. But no one is as brilliant and triumphant as Trump claims he is. So what happens to the facts that don’t fit his story, the things he leaves out when he’s telling us what a winner he is? They become his shadow—the insulting labels such as “stupid,” “pathetic” and “loser” that he denies in himself and projects onto others.
If Trump’s self-image collides with reality, he revises reality. There is a big gap between who he is and who he wants to be, and when anyone says or does anything that makes him dimly aware of the difference, he hits them with a hot blast of abuse. This is the key to understanding Trump: He is driven by a relentless, belligerent defense of his self-image.
This is why he made racist attacks against Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel for his actions in the lawsuit on Trump University.
That’s why Trump attacked the media over their questions on his charity to Veterans Groups—calling one reporter “a sleaze,” another “a loser” and complaining, “You make me look very bad.”
Trump’s self-image runs his life. If he becomes president, it will run our country.
Trump is dangerous because he’s more extreme than we are
—and in five ways: how grandiose his self-image is, how much he twists reality to fit it, how furious he becomes when it’s threatened, how much scrutiny his self-image takes in the media, and how many tools he has to promote his self-image and punish the people who threaten it.
The element that could change dramatically in the next year, and the one that ultimately determines how dangerous he is, is the last one—the tools he has to promote his self-image and punish people who threaten it.
He’s also said, "If I become president, oh, do they [the New York Times and The Washington Post] have problems. They're going to have such problems. And one of the things I'm going to do … if I win … is I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
Trump would not, as president, have the power to change libel laws, but this statement shows how eager he is to use the powers of the presidency to strike at his critics. Imagine if he had the tools of the CIA, FBI, IRS, the Justice Department, the U.S. military—and the nuclear codes—to promote his grandiose sense of self. President Trump would be able, almost entirely on his own—because there are no real checks and balances when it comes to pushing the button—order a nuclear strike. That makes his proximity to the presidency a global emergency.
Trump’s supporters all think he’s strong, so opponents should expose him as weak. They just have to change the way voters see his tantrums.
If the view of Trump as a thin-skinned guy who can’t take a punch becomes a dominant part of the campaign narrative, then his show of strength becomes a sign of weakness—and that weakness is not only exposed; it can be exploited.
The more attention is focused on his tirades, the more Trump’s pattern will become clear: He has a grandiose sense of self; he gets furious with those who challenge him, and if he gains the powers of the presidency, he will use them to confirm his self-image and punish those who attack it. This is the profile of a man who is not fit for duty. It is the face of a tyrant. The question is whether the country sees it before the election, or after he wins it.

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