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posted by janrinok on Monday November 14 2016, @09:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-a-different-president dept.

I've come across an article on The Atlantic that analyses Trump's personality:

Many questions have arisen about Trump during this campaign season—about his platform, his knowledge of issues, his inflammatory language, his level of comfort with political violence. This article touches on some of that. But its central aim is to create a psychological portrait of the man. Who is he, really? How does his mind work? How might he go about making decisions in office, were he to become president? And what does all that suggest about the sort of president he'd be?

It's a long, but very interesting read.

Here's a list of sentences the article itself highlights:

Combined with a gift for humor, anger lies at the heart of Trump's charisma.

Trump appeals to an ancient fear of contagion, which analogizes out-groups to parasites and poisons.

Narcissism in presidents is a double-edged sword. It is associated with historians' ratings of "greatness"—but also with impeachment resolutions.

Andrew Jackson displayed many of the same psychological qualities that we see in Trump.

Trump has never forgotten the lesson from his father: The world is a dangerous place. You have to be ready to fight.

And the final paragraph summarizes:

Who, really, is Donald Trump? What's behind the actor's mask? I can discern little more than narcissistic motivations and a complementary personal narrative about winning at any cost. It is as if Trump has invested so much of himself in developing and refining his socially dominant role that he has nothing left over to create a meaningful story for his life, or for the nation. It is always Donald Trump playing Donald Trump, fighting to win, but never knowing why.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Monday November 14 2016, @11:15PM

    by Username (4557) on Monday November 14 2016, @11:15PM (#426720)

    Almost all the major media outlets told people how to vote. Not slanted or hinted, directly said elect Hillary Clinton. Elect Hillary Clinton or the world would end. That is some 1984 level shit. One should have taken that into consideration when voting.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @11:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14 2016, @11:23PM (#426731)

    What's missing from your analysis is the most important part: the why.

    First of all, many outlets refused to endorse Clinton. They were denouncing Trump. USA Today being an example that has never endorsed a candidate, not even once.

    The fact that they all agreed that Trump is deeply and unprecedentedly flawed does not make his flaws into positives. They were trying to tell you something. You chose not to hear it because of the messenger.

    • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday November 15 2016, @01:35PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @01:35PM (#426943)

      OK for the sake of an inductive proof / thought experiment we'll accept your theory as true and search for some paradoxes.

      Every Republican candidate for my entire long life has been "literally Hitler". Trump is merely the latest. This is certainly unarguable.

      So if your theory is correct that means generations of candidates have ALL been unfit. ALL of them. Yet the same class of people propose D candidates and none of them are ever, ever unfit no matter what.

      Eeeh... occams razor and all that, it is statistically possible just as in theory statistical thermodynamics says all the air molecules could randomly cluster in one half of the room for five minutes leading to my suffocation. Its just a little bit unlikely, just a bit.

      So I can't prove you wrong, I can merely prove the odds are less than 1 in a billion that you're correct. I'm chill with that.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @01:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @01:58PM (#426949)

        > Every Republican candidate for my entire long life has been "literally Hitler"

        That's the sophistry of begging the question. Never before in your life has every single editorial staff refused to endorse the republican candidate. Never before in your life has the KKK's official newspaper endorsed the republican candidate.

        Some rando saying a candidate is "literally hitler" is not the same as what happened with Trump. For you to think otherwise is a head-in-the-sand attempt to normalize the abnormal.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @12:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @12:37AM (#426761)

    > That is some 1984 level shit.

    Meanwhile Trump straight-up hired the CEO of breitbart, the single biggest media cheerleader of Trump, to work on his campaign and has now given him a top job in his administration.

    That is some 1984 level shit that you and all the other people so horrified by clinton's suppossedly cozy relationship with the media seem to be perfectly fine with.
    W.T.F?!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:08AM (#426811)

      Don't point out their crazy, it only makes them angrier and louder!

  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday November 15 2016, @10:55PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @10:55PM (#427252) Journal