Trump, love, and stuff.

There are updates to this here.

Is Trump lovable or unlovable? I suppose it depends on who you ask. Mary Trump says the following:

"Nobody likes Donald. He's unlikable and he's unlovable." (Read article “Trump's psychologist niece spills about 'great trauma' that made him who he is” and listen to her interview here.)

If you ask, as I did, Perchance AI for an illustration of Trump on a Valentine’s Day card, aside from a few like the one on the top of this page, you come up with a rather unlovable looking fellow:

Perchance AI photo generator had its own “opinion” about who Trump really loves:

Many of the comments to the RawStory article, probably the majority since I haven’t read all 189 of them, lambast Trump in one way or another. For example from Kerry Kalvert:

Nature or nuture?

I have never encountered examples of a sewer rat born into a pack of cannibals grow up to be anything other than a cannibal.

It is a chicken or egg proposition.

But I am pretty sure if Trump’s mother was the virgin Mary and his brother was baby Jesus, baby Jesus would have been thrown out of the manger into the pig sty and we would not be infested with Christians.

Only a few address his psychopathology or the childhood experiences which shaped his malevolent personality. Some commenters suggest it is not relevant to understand him at all to which I respond with Sun Tzu’s dictum in “The Art of War” about how important it is to know the enemy, and oneself in order to be victorious.

One of the comments from a frequent RawStory commenter, Ricardo Santos, who I agree with follows.

Like I said many times, the motherfcker suffers from Mother issues (losing out on his bonding stage of development) which makes him needy, seeking approval, validation and adulation. As well as, being sociopathic having no empathy, bullying (defense mechanism) in getting what he wants, and being a serial killer. Though he does not actually do the killing, we saw that he is capable of doing, seeing millions die because of his Covid decisons. I asked and have been asking, will he beat his record of 1+ million Covid death, or beat Stalin's murdering of 20+ millions of his own citizens. Well, 16 people died from tornados 3 days ago do to lack of weather announcement, the airplane disasters occurring now, and how many have died because of the cancellation of the Foreign aid funding? Add the 30 million that are going to lose their Medicaid? He also suffers from Father issues, feelings of inadequacies (raping/sexually abusing women), though he is a narcissist displaying signs of self aggrandizement (I'm better than my generals, posting AI images of himself), never wrong but knowing he is a failure, intimidated by intellectual men and women who oppose him, because it reminds him of daddy dearest who rejected his incompetence! He carries so much hate and anger and he wants his revenge for being born. Like Doc Holiday said, "A man like Ringo (Trump) has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it." Or like Mary's book Titled says, "Too Much and Never Enough

Mary Trump said the following:

"Much of Donald's characterological disorder is based on the fact that he is an extremely weak person, and this is going to sound reductive but I promise you this is true, who has never gotten what he most needed and wanted in life, which is to be loved. That is still what he most needs and wants."

In his classic book “The Art of Loving” Eric Fromm writes in the preface: that the book does not provide instruction in what he terms the "art of loving", but rather argues that love, rather than a sentiment, is an artistic practice. Any attempt to love another is bound to fail, if one does not commit their total personality to learning and practicing loving. He states that "individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one's neighbour, without true humility, courage, faith and discipline." (Wikipedia)

I generally agree with Mary Trump but in this case I take issue with her when she says nobody likes her uncle and that he’s both unlikable and unlovable. She doesn’t take into consideration here that there are people who have their own pathological needs which developed when they were children for various reasons to love someone like Donald Trump. You can see this manifest in the extent to which they exhibit their feelings for him, to how much they fawn over him and seem to worship him. Some of course are kowtowing to him to curry his favor because he has power over them and they may actually dislike him, or even despise him. Some may dislike themselves for being so duplicitous, but I have no doubt that many of them have true feelings of what for them can reasonably be called love even if it is pathological. Maybe they never had a cold and distant father and crave any morsel of attention from Trump because he is a father figure to them.

If Trump could be unflinchingly honest with himself he’d realize that very few people in his life truly loved him. He’d see that the people who say they love him are attracted to his power and love him to satisfy there own needs, some healthy (Ivanka when she was a child comes to mind) and others for what I suspect are pathological reasons having to do with their own childhood experiences (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laura Loomer, and many female members of his cult for example). It is debatable whether any of his wives loved him for healthy reasons.

Eva loved Adolph, so anything is possible.

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What does Trump's gaffe-filled speech tell us about him? Is it psychology or physiology, or both?

 

Adapted from Hypnotic seance,

 by Richard Bergh, 1887

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

Trump's gaffe-filled speech yesterday where he said he beat Obama before and will beat him again and will prevent World War II was  covered, and mocked, on "Morning Joe" as examples of declining cognitive ability tied in with his age, that is, his physiology.

Click above to watch Morning Joe segment

There's another way of looking at this which Mika did allude to, his psychology. What we may be seeing is that this off-the-wall speech was an indication that his anxiety over his legal jeopardy is manifesting itself and he isn't thinking clearly due to this. 

Later on Morning Joe Al Sharpton spoke directly to this:

Click to view

This is what former federal prosecutor Harry Litman said on Sunday on "Meet the Press" 

 He's not afraid of prison and doesn't even think about it.

Here's the thing about this notion. It is true that if someone doesn't think about having something horrible happen to them, prison in Trump's case, they may not experience fear. Prison for Trump, after all, isn't inevitable like death. Thoughtful self-aware people think about their own mortality from time to time, and as death from disease or merely old age gets closer they think about it more often.

They key term above is thoughtful self-aware people.  I defy anyone to give indesputable examples of Trump having this characteristic. 

Depth psychology tells us that the unconscious mind exists. Harry Litman opined the following about what Trump thinks:

Instead, it's nothing more than a political witch hunt he assumes will disappear under the law.

I suspect that this indeed is what is in Trump's conscious mind. 

He has had minor setbacks with the law but for him these were nothing more than what for a normal person would be a $25 parking ticket that wouldn't raise our auto insurance costs or add driving infraction points. It costs as much as a meal at Applebee's but won't break the bank.

Trump has believed he's so far above the law he'd need a powerful telescope to see it, and that's even if he cared enough to look. He doesn't look because at some level in his unconscious there's an awareness that he'd see it if he looked hard enough. It may seem far away and impotent to him but he should learn about trying to fight the law from the song “I Fought the Law”.

 The song was written by Sonny Curtis of the Crickets which became popularized by the Bobby Fuller Four, who had a top-ten hit with it in 1966.  Below is the 1979 version from The Clash:

Click for video

Trump seems to be playing a version of the song which goes "I fought the law and I won" in his mind.

This is the belief system of a grandiose narcissist who has his belief in his invulnerability from the consequences of bad acts baked in.

Addendum:  

I nominate "I Fought the Law" as the official theme song for Trump. It's has been ranked No. 175 on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004, and the same year was named one of the 500 "Songs that Shaped Rock" by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It can only help its standing as a rock classic if it is played at Trump on loudspeakers outside of his rallies. 

Perhaps someone can record a version that goes "he fought the law, and the law won" sometime soon.