Trump is not only the worst president in U.S. history, he is arguably the most transparent one as well. If you don't know why he acts the way he does by now, you either haven't been paying attention, or, more seriously, you are inclined to believe that the writing on his identity's wall tends to lead to an heroic interpretation, rather than to a clinical one.
The purpose of this article is not only to explain why Trump acts the way he does, but also to indicate why his personality disorder is so dangerous to the well-being of the United States and to the entire world. I will illustrate this with the help of an excerpt from Stephen Hawking's latest and last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, published a few months after the great scientist's death in March 2018, at the age of seventy-six. I will address Trump's personality-disorder first.
1. The Malignant Narcissist
All non-partisan observers should know by now that Trump is neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. Morality for him is that which supports him; immorality for him is any form of opposition--What can be more amoral than that? The examples are legion! One of the latest is his criticism of Mark Hertling, the Navy Seal who was instrumental in capturing Saddam Hussein and killing Osama bin Laden. The retired admiral took Trump to task for his attacks on the press. When Chris Wallace of Fox News asked for a comment on Hertling's criticism, Trump interrupted and stated that the admiral was a Clinton and Obama supporter. (An accusation which the admiral subsequently vehemently denied). For Trump, the accusation of being a Clinton or Obama supporter nullifies the objectivity of whatever is said; whatever opponents say is by definition immoral, according to his internal, very limited dictionary.
If you would prefer a clinical reason that explains Trump's behavior rather that an ethical one, it is malignant narcissism, an extreme form of vanity. Trump lives on praise as a vampire lives on blood; without it he becomes desiccated, like a grape after a week in a desert.
Because he lacks a center, he must imagine himself to be the center of the universe. Because he knows so little, he pretends to know everything in order to salvage his precarious equilibrium. If deep down in his psyche he believes that he is worthless--this is why narcissists need constant praise--he surely knows how to cover up his lack of character with his characteristic bragging. "How would you grade your presidency so far?" Trump was asked in a recent interview. "A+," he replied; "Can I go higher than that?" He has been saying such ridiculous things for so long that
one isn't sure if he really believes the lies he tells. I think he does, which is sad and scary--Trump, after all, is the most powerful person in the world. He does not have the right stuff, however; we know it, and deep down there he knows it as well.
2. The Ignorant Narcissist
Trump claims that he is a "very stable genius," and that he knows "all the words," while in reality he is profoundly ignorant of that which one needs to know in order to govern, and cannot even put a decent sentence together. His tragedy, which has become ours, is a toxic combination of ignorance and inability to learn. Learning involves, among other things, humility and the ability to listen. Trump's lack of both of these qualities astounds. How can you learn if you are driven to pretend that you are smarter than everyone else and know all the answers already? One of his former instructors at the Wharton School of Business declared that Trump was a terrible student for this very reason.
Trump's inability to learn, his delusion that he knows all the answers, and his impulsiveness in making decisions without expert input are very dangerous flaws indeed. One of many examples follows. Trump discovered that South Korea has a trade surplus with the United States. Impulsively, he decided to pull out troops from South Korea and transfer missile defenses to Oregon. This would be an unmitigated disaster, since South Korea's proximity to "Little Rocket Man" means that a missile launched at the United States would be detected much earlier, a fact of crucial importance. Trump apparently directed his staff to have a letter ready for his signature, a letter informing the South Koreans that the United States was withdrawing from its military commitments. A patriotic aide intercepted the letter; Trump subsequently forgot about it. Whew! (The source of this anecdote is Bob Woodward's book, Fear, which chronicles the truly fearsome and amoralTrumpian chaos).
Why is he, in addition to his narcissism, so ignorant? He doesn't read. Kelly, the Secretary of Defense, considers Trump to be at the level of a fifth-grader. If he doesn't read, and he apparently doesn't, it is far worse than that. Aides apparently have to have texts illustrated with pictures, so that the president can grasp what is going on in informative meetings. Trump is known to "keep up" with the news by watching television, not by reading. This is truly unprecedented.
How does a refusal or inability to read affect a human being's ability to learn? For this, we turn to a passage from Steven Hawking's last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, (Bantam Books, 2018):
Trump ridiculously claims that he is “a very stable genius”—if he were, he wouldn’t have to make such outlandish claims. Stephen Hawking lacked the narcissism to boast, nor did he need to—his genius was apparent to all. The great scientist who, amazingly, lasted over half a century after receiving a diagnosis of a malady which usually proves fatal within a few years, unfortunately died in March of this year, 2018, at the age of seventy-six, “a very stable genius,” despite his crippling handicap, to the very end of his life. Not only characterized by stability, his genius, as one might expect from a scientist, was also informed by rationality and by a progressive stance as well. He was thus in vehement opposition to the inane populism of Donald Trump.
What follows is a quote from Hawkings's book:
The DNA in a human egg or sperm contains three billion base pairs of nucleic acids...the total amount of useful information in our genes is probably something like a hundred million bits...By contrast, a paperback novel might contain two million bits of information. Therefore, a human is equivalent to about fifty Harry Potter books, and a major modern national library can contain about five million books--or about ten trillion bits. The amount of information handed down in books or via the internet is 100,000 times as much as there is in DNA.
--pages 76-
What we quoted from his book might not have been written with Trump in mind, but it exposes very well the current American—and world—predicament. Trump isn’t able and isn’t even willing to learn from experts, since he doesn’t read and suffers from a pathology that makes him imagine that he knows all the answers already—a truly toxic combination!
A few pages further on, Hawking writes:
An even greater limitation (the first arising from specialization in narrower and narrower fields due exponential growth of knowledge) and danger for future generations
is that we still have the instincts, and in particular the aggressive impulses, that we had in caveman days.
--page 80
Trump’s aggression and greed are not tempered by wisdom, since he has no access to the wise. Trump’s hates and delusions are not tempered by the light of experience either; his illness prevents him from seeing light in the world, since he lives in his own world, which is dark. (He lives in a primitive world of nitbits, as it were). Trump is thus not merely a narcissist, but a Neolithic Narcissist; we’ve got a caveman in the White House and all, to put it mildly, isn’t well.
The purpose of this article is not only to explain why Trump acts the way he does, but also to indicate why his personality disorder is so dangerous to the well-being of the United States and to the entire world. I will illustrate this with the help of an excerpt from Stephen Hawking's latest and last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, published a few months after the great scientist's death in March 2018, at the age of seventy-six. I will address Trump's personality-disorder first.
1. The Malignant Narcissist
All non-partisan observers should know by now that Trump is neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. Morality for him is that which supports him; immorality for him is any form of opposition--What can be more amoral than that? The examples are legion! One of the latest is his criticism of Mark Hertling, the Navy Seal who was instrumental in capturing Saddam Hussein and killing Osama bin Laden. The retired admiral took Trump to task for his attacks on the press. When Chris Wallace of Fox News asked for a comment on Hertling's criticism, Trump interrupted and stated that the admiral was a Clinton and Obama supporter. (An accusation which the admiral subsequently vehemently denied). For Trump, the accusation of being a Clinton or Obama supporter nullifies the objectivity of whatever is said; whatever opponents say is by definition immoral, according to his internal, very limited dictionary.
If you would prefer a clinical reason that explains Trump's behavior rather that an ethical one, it is malignant narcissism, an extreme form of vanity. Trump lives on praise as a vampire lives on blood; without it he becomes desiccated, like a grape after a week in a desert.
Because he lacks a center, he must imagine himself to be the center of the universe. Because he knows so little, he pretends to know everything in order to salvage his precarious equilibrium. If deep down in his psyche he believes that he is worthless--this is why narcissists need constant praise--he surely knows how to cover up his lack of character with his characteristic bragging. "How would you grade your presidency so far?" Trump was asked in a recent interview. "A+," he replied; "Can I go higher than that?" He has been saying such ridiculous things for so long that
one isn't sure if he really believes the lies he tells. I think he does, which is sad and scary--Trump, after all, is the most powerful person in the world. He does not have the right stuff, however; we know it, and deep down there he knows it as well.
2. The Ignorant Narcissist
Trump claims that he is a "very stable genius," and that he knows "all the words," while in reality he is profoundly ignorant of that which one needs to know in order to govern, and cannot even put a decent sentence together. His tragedy, which has become ours, is a toxic combination of ignorance and inability to learn. Learning involves, among other things, humility and the ability to listen. Trump's lack of both of these qualities astounds. How can you learn if you are driven to pretend that you are smarter than everyone else and know all the answers already? One of his former instructors at the Wharton School of Business declared that Trump was a terrible student for this very reason.
Trump's inability to learn, his delusion that he knows all the answers, and his impulsiveness in making decisions without expert input are very dangerous flaws indeed. One of many examples follows. Trump discovered that South Korea has a trade surplus with the United States. Impulsively, he decided to pull out troops from South Korea and transfer missile defenses to Oregon. This would be an unmitigated disaster, since South Korea's proximity to "Little Rocket Man" means that a missile launched at the United States would be detected much earlier, a fact of crucial importance. Trump apparently directed his staff to have a letter ready for his signature, a letter informing the South Koreans that the United States was withdrawing from its military commitments. A patriotic aide intercepted the letter; Trump subsequently forgot about it. Whew! (The source of this anecdote is Bob Woodward's book, Fear, which chronicles the truly fearsome and amoralTrumpian chaos).
Why is he, in addition to his narcissism, so ignorant? He doesn't read. Kelly, the Secretary of Defense, considers Trump to be at the level of a fifth-grader. If he doesn't read, and he apparently doesn't, it is far worse than that. Aides apparently have to have texts illustrated with pictures, so that the president can grasp what is going on in informative meetings. Trump is known to "keep up" with the news by watching television, not by reading. This is truly unprecedented.
How does a refusal or inability to read affect a human being's ability to learn? For this, we turn to a passage from Steven Hawking's last book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, (Bantam Books, 2018):
Trump ridiculously claims that he is “a very stable genius”—if he were, he wouldn’t have to make such outlandish claims. Stephen Hawking lacked the narcissism to boast, nor did he need to—his genius was apparent to all. The great scientist who, amazingly, lasted over half a century after receiving a diagnosis of a malady which usually proves fatal within a few years, unfortunately died in March of this year, 2018, at the age of seventy-six, “a very stable genius,” despite his crippling handicap, to the very end of his life. Not only characterized by stability, his genius, as one might expect from a scientist, was also informed by rationality and by a progressive stance as well. He was thus in vehement opposition to the inane populism of Donald Trump.
What follows is a quote from Hawkings's book:
The DNA in a human egg or sperm contains three billion base pairs of nucleic acids...the total amount of useful information in our genes is probably something like a hundred million bits...By contrast, a paperback novel might contain two million bits of information. Therefore, a human is equivalent to about fifty Harry Potter books, and a major modern national library can contain about five million books--or about ten trillion bits. The amount of information handed down in books or via the internet is 100,000 times as much as there is in DNA.
--pages 76-
What we quoted from his book might not have been written with Trump in mind, but it exposes very well the current American—and world—predicament. Trump isn’t able and isn’t even willing to learn from experts, since he doesn’t read and suffers from a pathology that makes him imagine that he knows all the answers already—a truly toxic combination!
A few pages further on, Hawking writes:
An even greater limitation (the first arising from specialization in narrower and narrower fields due exponential growth of knowledge) and danger for future generations
is that we still have the instincts, and in particular the aggressive impulses, that we had in caveman days.
--page 80
Trump’s aggression and greed are not tempered by wisdom, since he has no access to the wise. Trump’s hates and delusions are not tempered by the light of experience either; his illness prevents him from seeing light in the world, since he lives in his own world, which is dark. (He lives in a primitive world of nitbits, as it were). Trump is thus not merely a narcissist, but a Neolithic Narcissist; we’ve got a caveman in the White House and all, to put it mildly, isn’t well.
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