Gen. Kelley called Trump dumb, immoral, ignorant, and lazy. Add this to the Dark Tetrad.

Gen. Kelley called Trump dumb, immoral, ignorant, and lazy. Add this to the Dark Tetrad.

By Hal Brown

DonkeyHotey has created uncountable caricatures of Trump, politicians, and others in the news, many of which are used on Crooks and Liars and other well known websites. I often find they capture the essence of Trump and use them in my blog, for example today. I spent a lot of time finding the right emojis for dumb, immoral, ignorant, and lazy and needed an image to put them on.

Click above to read article that prompted this blog

I am weary of writing variations of the same thing from my perspective as having been a psychotherapist for 40 years and analyzing Trump's psychopathology. Use DuckDuckGo to search my name and Trump delusional and the first three links are stories I wrote. Oh well, here's yet another.

Gen. John Kelley gives us another tetrad to add to an assessment of Trump in addition to the Dark Tedrad which is as follows:

The anti-social personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. Narcissism involves the tendency to be overly concerned with one’s self-image, Machiavellianism involves the tendency to be deceitful and manipulative, psychopathy includes callousness and lack of remorse, and sadism involves pleasure from inflicting pain on others.

This is an excerpt from RAWSTORY:

Michael Schmidt told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about what Kelly learned about the former president and his abilities. Schmidt appeared Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to discuss the upcoming paperback edition of his book, Donald Trump V. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, which includes new revelations from John Kelly.

"So when Kelly came in as chief of staff, he thought that the problem around Trump was that he was not staffed properly and they needed to create a process around him, and that's what the chaos of the first six months of the administration was about," Schmidt said. "But when Kelly comes in as chief of staff, what he realizes is that the problem is not just the fact that there's not a process and that he's not being staffed as well as he could, but that Trump himself was the problem, that Trump was far dumber and immoral and ignorant and lazy than he ever thought he was."

 "Within a few days, he becomes terrified because here he is, the top staffer to the president of the United States, and he's realizing that the president of the United States is far more limited and potentially dangerous than he ever thought, and at that point, there was no one else to call," Schmidt added. "He was -- it was just him and Trump, and he basically spends the next 18 months trying to manage Trump as much as he could.

I don't know what to call being dumb, immoral, ignorant, and lazy. 

Add these personality traits to being an extreme narcissist prone to outbursts of rage when he feels attacked, a psychopath who has engaged repeatedly in criminal and antisocial behavior without remorse or empathy for those victimized, a sadist who takes pleasure in causing and observing the suffering of other, and believing that any means however unscrupulous can justifiably be used in achieving political power, i.e. Machiavellianism. 

While looking at Trump through the lens of my being a retired psychotherapist I have to add that if Trump believes some of the things he says he believes he is also showing signs of having a delusional psychosis. Read my blog from a a few days ago:

I characterize Trump as being a witches brew of toxicity emanating a deadly miasma which is intoxicating to members of his cult who unfortunately represent a base of voters that GOP politicians must pander to lest they risk not being elected. 

Those who should know better, who should realize that he, to reference another psychological concept, is a malignant narcissist. This includes the same traits of the Dark Tetrad. It is defined an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate. 

A person with malignant narcissism exhibits paranoia in addition to the symptoms of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Because a malignant narcissist's personality cannot tolerate any criticism, being mocked typically causes paranoia.

The social psychologist Erich Fromm first coined the term "malignant narcissism" in 1964, describing it as a "severe mental sickness" representing "the quintessence of evil". He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity"

Wikipedia

If one objectively adds up all that we know about Donald Trump we see that there as only a few aspects of personality that makes him different than despotic genocidal leaders like Hitler and Putin responsible is three of the four characteristics described by Gen. Kelley: his being dumb, ignorant, and lazy. Of the four what he has in common is being totally immoral.

Almost irrelevant to governing is the observation made by NY Times columnist Jennifer Senior that Trump is a preening narcissist (I wrote about this here). Historic despots haven't always been as narcissistic as Trump. Idi Amin and his garb comes to mind and Putin liked to be photographed bare chested or practicing martial arts.

Recall that Trump missed the anniversary of the end of World War I because he was afraid of the rain messing up his hair.

Below from Schmidt's book: It was raining and Trump told Kelley he didn't want to go.He didn't want his hair to be ruined, and he didn't understand why he should go to a memorial site for troops who had been killed. "They lost" he told Kelley.... and then he went on to call them losers and suckers.

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Santos leads the GOP in eliciting Schadenfreude, no doubt more to come

 Santos leads the GOP in eliciting Schadenfreude, no doubt more to come

By Hal Brown, MSW

UPDATE: Jan. 29:

Original blog:

There's no word in English, or any other language for that matter, for the German word Schadenfreude. Following the German convention it is often capitalized, which is good since it means it doesn't need further emphasis here, although I am tempted to put it in bold. 

I experienced a delightful feeling of Schadenfreude when I read this article:

As far as I'm concerned, and I expect other Democrats too, the longer George Santos stays in the House the better. I am sure that many or most of the House Republicans wish he would just go away as quickly and quietly as possible. They may be able to sideline him but I have no doubt that he will make himself accessible to reporters eager to cover his every utterance. "If it bleeds, it leads" certainly applies to Santos, and he's hemorrhaging.

I am also watching reporters catching House Republicans being asked about Santos and enjoying watching them squirm as they deflect the questions.

Below top center, Steve Scalise:

Like Icarus, he is flying too close to the Sun

There's a hard-to-describe pleasure in experiencing Schadenfreude washing over you without a smidgen of guilt. If you feel any guilt, as a therapist myself,

 I can offer only two words for you. As Bob Newhart's Dr. Hartley shouted

 to a patient in a classic (for many therapists) clip:

I don't think it is wishful thinking to be convinced that Santos will not be the first Schadenfreude inducer as the House Republicans in the Freedom Caucus, more appropriately called the Free-to-Be-Crazy Caucus, grind the necessary business of the House to a screeching halt as they go full-steam ahead on their vengeance train. 

I don't wish death or literal injury on anyone but I am reminded of incidents like this when a train went much faster than the tracks would support.

The more-or-less not mentally unbalanced GOP House members like Jim Jordan, for all his grimacing, screaming, and screeching may have stories like this written about him...

compared to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert. and Matt Gaetz he's an exemplar of mental stability.

The Schadenfreude with Jordan probably won't come with his swatting at hallucinatory flying pigs during a televised hearing which he chairs. While I'd like to see him turn into a quivering mass of incoherence when one of the Democrats nails him I doubt it will happen. 

What I think will occur over time is that these hearings and investigations, especially the ones on the so-called weaponization of the federal government (read why this is the most dangerous) and Hunter Biden turn into Snipe hunts. I call it Schadenfreude delayed. When it happens...

.... for Republicans, and not in a good way... it will be a nightmare filled sleep they can't wake up from.

Updates: I really hoped George Santos would stay in the House for as long as possible, his being there causing rizik tsores (Yiddish for huge suffering) for Republicans. Now it looks like his days may be numbered. The Nassau County GOP called on him to resign. This makes it harder for House GOP to dodge the issue. 

Here he is refusing to resign:

I wonder who the aide by his side, who gets in the elevator with him, is.

Amanda Marcotte Said It All About The GOP House But Her Title Put It Mildly

 Amanda Marcotte Said It All About The GOP House But Her Title Put It Mildly

By Hal Brown

The lettering above comes from one of the images used to promote one of the versions of the Ray Bradbury novel of this name.

I was resting in bed after waking up this morning and thinking about writing something about what the next two years has in store for the country as the GOP turns the house into Benghazi on a malevolent mixture of steroids and psychedelics.   

Then I read this republished Salon essay by Amanda Marcotte on RAWSTORY.  (I like reading Salon articles on RAWSTORY because the later has a comments section and the former doesn't. If you prefer you can read this piece on Salon here.)

If it was up to me I would have changed the title of her essay. Instead of 

"Call it the Conspiracy Theory Congress: Things are about to get dangerously weird on Capitol Hill"

 I would have changed it to 

Call it the Conspiracy Theory Congress: Things are about to get treacherously weird on Capitol Hill

Amanda Marcotte addressed everything I was thinking and more better than I ever could.

I urge you to read what she wrote. I thought I'd bullet-point some of what stood out and it apropos that the word "bullet" in this term used in this particular context has another meaning. These are bullets aimed at the heart of our democracy.

• The antics of various House committees, as they work hand-in-glove with Fox News to create and disseminate right wing conspiracy theories, will make an epsiode of Infowars seem downright sober-minded.
• Having realized that they'll likely never get their desired ends through democratic means, they've determined democracy itself must go. And make no mistake: McCarthy and other GOP leaders are only too happy to go along with the program.
• ...the current iteration of the GOP is functionally a fascist party and adheres to the knee-jerk fascist distaste for thinking, rational debate, and above all, letting facts guide your decision-making.
• ...they will use the immense power and resources of the U.S. Congress to be a bullshit-generating machine. 
• The hearings publicizing the conspiracy theories will be framed as "investigations," but no one should be fooled. The Republicans behind these lies, much less the right wing "journalists" who will elevate them, know full well it's all nonsense.
• The purpose of these exercises in fantastical story-telling is, if anything, more diabolical than an old-fashioned desire to fool people. It's about a larger assault on truth itself, or more specifically, on the value that truth has in our society. The goal of the "alternative facts" crowd is to make truth no more relevant than lies.
• The next two years of "hearings" will be much of the same: Lots of insinuations and false accusations, as well as incoherent ramblings that only make sense to those who are already well-versed in right wing conspiracy theories. Little, if any, effort will be put toward making any of these outlandish stories or conspiracy theories convincing. They aren't really meant to be believed. They are meant to alter the American relationship with reality so people lose all faith that the difference between true and false matters at all.

This all doesn't strike me as merely dangerous. I don't think it is hyperbole to say that treachery is what we as a nation is facing. 

Addendum 1: This is the second time I used an illustration form Something Wicked The Way Comes in a story. This is from May, 2016:

Addendum 2:

For whatever reason, Chris Hedges, the author of 

America's theater of the absurd: Our politics has become an endless carnival

Last week's power struggle between warring factions of charlatans, con men and "influencers" was only the beginning

 in Salon  decided to put, or allow to be poorly photoshopped, a clown nose onto President Biden as if he is cut from the same fascistic clothe as Kevin McCarthy and Donald Trump. 

He wrote: The billionaire class, for the most part, prefers the mask of a Joe Biden, who broke the railroad unions. But it also knows that the goons and con artists on the far right will not interfere in its disemboweling of the nation.

This is the only reference to Biden in his essay. 

This is an example of bothsidesism. He isn't comparing apples and oranges. He's comparing an apple with a small bruise with a pit of venomous vipers.

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