Trump has shown a wide range of pathological behavior over the past seven years or so. He has an unhealthy fascination with violence. He lacks impulse control and empathy. He revels in cruelty. He compulsively lies and exhibits traits of malignant narcissism. He is a confirmed sexual predator and misogynist. He has a tenuous relationship to reality, and increasingly retreats into victimology and a persecution complex. He believes himself to be almost literally superhuman and often behaves like a cult leader.
In my many conversations with mental health experts during the Age of Trump, one of their consistent themes has been the suggestion that if the ex-president was not a rich white man he would likely have been arrested or otherwise removed from normal society decades ago.
Trump's pathological behavior is in no way separate from his role as leader of the neofascist MAGA movement and larger white right. One repeated error made by the mainstream media and the larger political class is to divide Trump's obvious mental health issues from his political behavior and the ascendancy of his movement.
Fascism and other forms of illiberal politics are not "merely" political problems. In reality, such things are a societal force and imaginary that both harness and generate collective mass sociopathy and other forms of physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual and spiritual pathology. Sick societies produce sick leaders; sick leaders have sick followers; in combination, those forces produce sick political movements. Collectively, these are manifestations of a condition of malignant normality that can all too easily end in societal destruction.
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In my many conversations with mental health experts during the Age of Trump, one of their consistent themes has been the suggestion that if the ex-president was not a rich white man he would likely have been arrested or otherwise removed from normal society decades ago.
Trump's pathological behavior is in no way separate from his role as leader of the neofascist MAGA movement and larger white right. One repeated error made by the mainstream media and the larger political class is to divide Trump's obvious mental health issues from his political behavior and the ascendancy of his movement.
Fascism and other forms of illiberal politics are not "merely" political problems. In reality, such things are a societal force and imaginary that both harness and generate collective mass sociopathy and other forms of physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual and spiritual pathology. Sick societies produce sick leaders; sick leaders have sick followers; in combination, those forces produce sick political movements. Collectively, these are manifestations of a condition of malignant normality that can all too easily end in societal destruction.
Link