TRUMP, SERPENT OR FALSE PROPHET?
Updated: Feb 11, 2019
In many respects, Trump is like the serpent in the garden of Eden seducing the unwitting into acting against their own best interest. To those easily razzled and dazzled by a slick 'snake oil' salesman, they are merely mesmerized by a flashy snake, charming a crowd of the gullible into buying a prescription for disaster. To those whose primitive impulses of a hyperactive amygdala dominates their critical thinking, Trump is a false and militant prophet beating a drum that excites their own aggressive natures. Common to all three scenarios is that Trump's constant purpose is to exploit these easily manipulated groups into helping him, in any and every way possible to get closer to someone else's dollar, and, to accrue enough power to insulate him from accountability for any illegal action he might get caught doing. Spoiler Alert; in the end, Trump is serving a useful purpose!
Those personally acquainted with Trump will attest that he is as equally, and as obnoxiously, constantly self-acclaiming out of the political limelight as he is while in it. I have personally observed Trump approach people with much more money, greater social position, and with far more worldly experience than he, and declare,"Isn't that the best (whatever) you've ever experienced?", or, "Isn't that the best show ever? No one puts on a better show than I do, do they?" While the established moneyed class, the 'well bred,' and those with more innate social sensibility long abhorred Trump's lack of social discretion and grace, much to Trump's misunderstanding and increased sense of rejection, it's worth considering that Trump did not take the usual business path of relying upon others to promote his business, which ultimately became his singular identity. Instead, Trump became his own primary public relations person and made constant self-promotion the dominant feature of his character and relationship with others. While doing so will get a pass in some business circles, it remains offensive in most social circumstances, because most people don't like others who contribute little more to a conversation than talking endlessly about themselves.
That, however, is the lesser of Trump's social sins. Trump is the boy who cries wolf over and over again, to the point that few who know him well, believe him at all. Further, his claims are routinely so exaggerated and overblown that he simply isn't believable about anything that can't be independently verified. But, as the entire world has directly witnessed over the past three years, Trump's obsession with promoting false realities is born of more than mere self promotion. He has exhibited all the symptoms of a pathological liar, also known as mythomania and pseudologia fantastica. Trump's propensity for perpetuating myth and fantasy logic is now legendary. As with most pathological liars, he can easily transition from telling a lie based on the notion that it could have happened and then having a sense of conviction that it did. However, pathological lying is associated with mental illness, and specifically with antisocial, narcissistic, and, or, histrionic personality disorders. Trump routinely vacillates between evidencing symptoms of all three. Those with pathological antisocial disorder lie for external personal profit in the forms of money, sex, and power; characteristic of Trump. Narcissists think they have achieved perfection and are unempathetic to others; characteristic of Trump. Quoting WebMD, "people with histrionic personality disorder ... have an overwhelming desire to be noticed, and often behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention...", and are, "uncomfortable unless he or she is the center of attention...In many cases ... they have good social skills; however, they tend to use these skills to manipulate others...and they tend to:
exhibit inappropriately seductive or flirtatious behavior
.Shift emotions rapidly
.Act very dramatically, as though performing before an audience, with exaggerated emotions and expressions, yet appears to lack sincerity
.Be overly concerned with physical appearance
.Constantly seek reassurance or approval
.Be excessively sensitive to criticism or disapproval
.Have a low tolerance for frustration and be easily bored by routine
.Not think before acting
.Make rash decisions
.Be self-centered and rarely show concern for others."
Meanwhile, Psychology Today cites these among the reasons for pathological lying:
"1. The lie does matter ... to them. While everyone around them thinks it’s an inconsequential issue, the liar believes it is critically important.
2. Telling the truth feels like giving up control. (these) people tell lies because they are trying to control a situation and exert influence toward getting the decisions or reactions they want. The truth can be “inconvenient” because it might not conform to their narrative.
3. They don’t want to disappoint you. It may not feel like it to you, but people who tell lie after lie are often worried about losing the respect of those around them.
4. Lies snowball. If a chronic liar admits to any single lie, they feel like they’re admitting to being a liar, and then you’ll have reason to distrust them.
5. It’s not a lie to them. Sometimes ... the person almost seems to have created a complete alternate world in their head, one that conforms to their moment-by-moment beliefs and needs.
6. They want it to be true. ...sometimes, liars hope that they can make something come true by saying it over and over, and by believing it as hard as they can."
There isn't a single symptom here that doesn't characterize Trump. But, a sufficiently observant person need not have read all this to recognize that Trump is mentally ill, and, as such, is a threat to society. In the instance of occupying the Oval Office, he is also a national security threat.
Possibly key to Trump's complex of symptoms is that he has demonstrated an underlying hatred for women by his public answer to the question, "So, you respect women?", by replying that he can't say that he does, and, by treating women like property to be 'manhandled at will," or, to be bought and sold with 'preneps,' suggesting that his ego is threatened by women. This plausibly stems from the fact that his pathology appears to be complicated with mild autism, suggested by his uncontrollable jerky and spastic hand and arm gestures while talking excitedly, and, by an associated attention deficit disorder, and, if all that wasn't enough, further complicated by an oppositional personality disorder, or ODD, requiring conflict and excessive stress to produce the adrenaline and cortisol which his brain is addicted to, presumably because his brain doesn’t produce sufficient normal mood stabilizing neurochemicals without those self induced stressors. All of these conditions are classically associated with compulsive lying. If, Trump's mother simply didn't know how to cope with his pathology induced uncontrollable childhood behavior, and, he held her responsible for the rejection and persecution of being sent to military school, then his pathology was amplified by unresolved conflict about women. Compulsive liars are often associated with issues of childhood abuse and parent modeling, and lying helps them cope with negative feelings or a lack of self worth.
The essence of Evil is the willful destructive and injurious effects of the self absorbed and the self serving person's actions upon others. People are born self absorbed and self consumed with having their own desires and needs satisfied with complete indifference to the welfare of others. This, then, is the genesis of Biblical 'Original Sin.' When the self consumed child fails to respond positively to the humanizing and civilizing effects of socialization, the child matures with a pathological narcissism with no, or insufficient, social empathy while often manifesting antisocial and criminal tendencies. Trump is a classic example of a person who never became sufficiently socialized to develop a normal level of social empathy or become normally civilized, while displaying anti-social and criminal tendencies with a complete absence of social conscience. Whether Trump's anti-social pathology is born purely of psychological abnormalities, or partly due to childhood conditioning, he is the living embodiment of Original Sin and the Evil that results when Original Sin is not restrained. Of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins,’ Trump glaringly manifests the first six; vainglorious pride, insatiable greed, lascivious lust, consuming and resentful envy, and insatiable gluttony. Further, and alarmingly, Trump is an accurate reflection of the Evil nature of the modern unregulated U.S. Corporation, and the Corporate Right Deep State which it employs in its War On the American Majority. In that regard, most of us owe gratitude to Trump for presenting the uncloaked, the unmasked face, and the true character of the Corporate Right, and for revealing its Evil nature. Because, Trump is the personification of the pathologically anti-social and socially destructive modern corporation. #JustSaying
Yet, he has taken our Oval Office hostage with the defense and protection of the Corporate Right Congress which has violated all norms and rules of Congressional oversight and its fiduciary to the American People, in equal measure to Trump himself. Thus, the Corporate Right Congress should get no pass on what constitutes an attack upon American values. Trump garnered the number of votes that he did largely for one reason, a one trick slogan from a bag of slogans that any slick snake oil salesman always carries with him. He said, "What do you have to lose?" With the ever increasing disaffection and dissatisfaction with the effects of our corporate controlled government, it didn't seem unreasonable to many people, on its surface. Those who weren't familiar with, or well informed on Trump's scurrilous business career, had no reason to suspect that they could actually lose their entire country to whoever Trump could sell it to for the highest price, which is what has been happening, bit by bit. It's imperative that those who voted for Trump only because they bought his one liner, "What do you have to lose," be fully informed of just how much they've already lost since his illegitimate occupation of the Oval Office, and how much more they can lose if he isn't displaced with urgency. #LockHimUpAlready ,PLEASE, Mr. Mueller !
