walrus51

In her recent opinion piece published in the NY Times (6/11/2022: ‘Donald Trump, American Monster’) Maureen Dowd compared Donald Trump to Frankenstein, suggesting that Trump willfully planned to overthrow our government.

Maureen has been in her business for a very long time, and – like a good marksman — she rarely veers far from center of the target.

There is an overwhelming body of evidence which confirms that Donald Trump is self-centered and lacking in empathy, the basic ingredients of a narcissistic personality.

Over the years, Trump developed an entire repertoire of very effective coping mechanisms which allows him to ‘fool some of the people all the time’, enabling him to convince about 30% of American people (mostly of European ancestry) that he actually cares about them. And, that he understands their frustrations related to the growing influence of immigrants and other non-Europeans on U.S. society and our economy; and the growing influence of ‘the deep state’ which blocks the voice of the people.

In her essay, Dowd acknowledges Trump as a narcissist, and she comes quite close to the bullseye.

What she may have missed is that Trump is the most dangerous of the species, what some have called, ‘the toxic narcissist’.

Clinical psychologist John Mayer, PhD. describes a toxic narcissist: “… continually causes drama in others’ lives at the very least and causes pain and destruction at the very worst.” Mayer notes that a subset of toxic narcissists, known as psychopaths, are ‘unstable, aggressive – often violent — and will show no remorse for their behavior’.

Dowd seems to have veered slightly off the trajectory toward the bullseye when she allowed the possibility that “Trump was deadly serious about overthrowing the government.”

Although Maureen is correct that his actions (if successful) would result in an overthrow of our government, it’s doubtful that idea never ever entered Trump’s mind. He was, is and continues to be focused on the potential personal shame of losing. As a Toxic (and likely Psychopathic) Narcissist, Trump won’t back down and/or stop until he is abducted by aliens or is reinstated to the oval office.

Meanwhile, Trump has helped to inspire and energize a (mostly quiet) army of people – often identified as members of the Evangelical Christian faith — who just want everything to return to the American Promise of 1957.

Until these wayward folks can be helped to understand that our world in 2022 is much different from 1957, they are an extremely dangerous factor and they must be very carefully dealt with as the January 6 Commission saga continues to emerge.