Trump's soulless cruelty is the point and, appallingly, many Americans get off on it, by Hal M. Brown

 

D. Earl Stephens gets it right in his RawStory essay "Americans get off on hurt, cruelty and revenge — and soulless Trump is their hero." 

I read two articles is RawStory prior to deciding to write this. Before reading the essay by D. Earl Stephens (above) I read this:

Highlighted below is what struck me as revelatory:

"In the first term, everyone was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend," Trump mused to reporters at his luxury Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday.

"I don't know, my personality changed or something."

What this sugests to me is that Trump is very much aware that his personality has been so noxious to many people that they just don't want to be physically near him. As I read these words I sense that he takes delight in this. 

This man is by any objective measure a malignant narcissist and someone who has all of the traits of a person described as being a manifestion of The Dark Triad. 

Here's a Wikipedia definition:

All three dark triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous–manipulative interpersonal style.

• Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.
• Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulativeness, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest.
• Psychopathy is characterized by continuous antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits, and remorselessness. It is considered the most malevolent of the dark triad.

Not all of Trump's supporters fit neatly into the Dark Triad. In fact, the majority of them probably have some traits to an extent but not all three. They don't necessarily dominate their personalty and significantly influence their behavior. I view them as the type of people who enjoy watching people suffer at the hands of their heroes whether in political news or on TV shows and in movies.

What I find of grave concern is that, as Stephens put it, these people "get off on it." They react vicariously experiencing pleasure when they observe Trump use his Dark Triad "buff boxer muscles" to punch others in the face and even more so when he aims his blows below the belt. As unbelievable as it is to those of us living in the rational world they see Trump like I used AI to depict him in the images left and bottom left, not as he'd really look in the upper left, below:

When Trump is up, as he often is, at 2:00 posting vicious messages aimed at his enemies he knows that the audience that will be turned on by them. To use some words in Stephen's essay he does this both to hurt his enemies and to entertain his cult of warped, ghoulish, knuckle-draggers.

Related:

We're watching the largest and most dangerous 'cult' in American history (also in RawStory) 

Yesterday's blog:

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Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)