Beating a Dead Horse...Again

On this blog I rode this pony into the ground so long ago it may seem to some that the poor beast needs to be interred.  I can’t. It can’t.

Donald Trump is a sick man, mentally. He has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). It is not particularly common, it is not particularly difficult to diagnose, and it explains nearly everything about this President of the United States.

Aside from egoistic behavior, it causes a distortion of reality (i.e. truth) and it creates disabling paranoia.  Further, it is almost impossible to treat since an individual with NPD will not submit to treatment because they cannot accept that the disorder exists. Psychologists usually end up treating the people who live with a NPD individual, for this disorder can be crushing for those forced to do so.

For our Country to have bumbled into placing a NPD individual into the White House it would be far less devastating if normal checks and balances were in place. Sadly, the Republican Party has chosen to closed ranks with the singular goal of supporting Trump. They have pushed their pendulum of support far askew from common sense in order to offset his bizarre behavior. 

They collectively believe this policy is necessary to avoid losing support from Trump’s “base”. What they’re really doing is contributing to an irrevocable schism of the American people that makes something as absurd as a “Trump base” possible. 

To someone with a NPD there is no objective truth. Trump has publically stated untruths literally thousands of times in his short term as President. He is likely the only person in the Nation who doesn’t know that fact. Yet he has not been called out on it by Republican lawmakers…at all. It is no wonder why Conservatives and Conservative media (Fox News e.g.) have embraced ambiguity as the new foundation of communication.

In the steam room at our gym I ran into a retired attorney I know casually. We were alone and got onto a friendly political conversation which found us with opposing judgments regarding Trump. I shared my opinion about Trump’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder as an explanation for his behavior.

I had not shared at that point the research I had done on NPDs going back years before Trump ran for President and why. His response to me was to totally discount what I suggested because I was not a “medical doctor”.  Presumably, had I been a pediatrician it would have made all the difference. The conversation went no further.

He did not inquire why I believe as I did, nor was he interested in the condition or how I came to be aware of it. His focus was simply to shoot the messenger. This is the Trump legacy.

During the Cohen hearing of the House Oversight Committee I was more overwhelmed by the Republican questioning than the testimony and evidence of Michael Cohen (which was overwhelming on its own). They uniformly attacked Cohen’s testimony by simply attacking his credibility, never once (during the hours I watched) did they question the substance of his testimony.

For example, they repeatedly pointed out that his lying to Congress regarding the Trump-Moscow project was (apparently) proof of Trump’s innocence, conveniently omitting that Trump knew Cohen had lied but never revealed that fact. Truth, moreover reality is no longer an element in the Republitrump Party. 

Political pragmatism, fake news, convenient emergencies, love affairs with dictators, big beautiful brains, the largest crowds, and all the best words are but a few examples of what bounces around in a NPD head. In your obnoxious uncle it only makes for an unpleasant Thanksgiving dinner. In a President it devastates social norms, impedes anything we can proudly call progress, and creates great international risk.

There are 250 Congressional Republicans (House & Senate). They are currently lemmings blindly following their deranged leader directly toward the edge of a precipice. They live in a world of fear and I’m pessimistic that they will change course.

Perhaps if the rest of us spoke up regarding the underlying cause for Trump’s unorthodox, anti-social, and often peculiar behavior, then the confused majority of Americans might recover, and I could finally bury this pony.