In a recent piece, The Price of Power, your editor raised this issue:
The price of the success of Trump and Musk has been a rotten status among decent humans. I don’t have to keep calling my lawyer, pushing some untruth on a journalist, driving up car prices, or pretending I’m someone I’m not. And unlike Trump, I’ve only needed one wife over the past 58 years.
Why lie, manipulate, and intimidate others in order merely to have power? And still be stuck with tens of millions who hate you?
Reader Bob Berg responds:
Why lie, cheat, etc. when millions won't love you? Here are the three options I'm pondering.
1. The psychologists and psychiatrists have been getting it wrong. Yes he is a hyper-narcissist but
he also seems like a sociopath of epic proportions. When I was new in
USAID and located inside the State Department, I recommended that they
have a highly talented psychiatrist to help diagnose foreign leaders
with very strange personalities and to guide senior diplomats on how to
handle them. Democrats and maybe journalists need those kinds of
insights.
2.
Maybe Trump doesn't care a whit what "common" people believe. (You will
remember how Leona Helmsley used that term sneeringly.) Maybe what he
craves is peer respect, hence billionaires, Putin and Xi. Sure.
Adoration, but how the common folks really are is besides the point to
him.
3. Maybe
he's not on our side. What he is doing makes perfect sense if he is a
toady of Russia...divide the country, weaken it, make it lose all its
friends (except Hungary and Israel), ruin the prospects of the country
by senseless economic policies, entrenching idiots at every level
possible, and relentless attacks on any mainline structures.
There is enough truth for each of these three, so maybe Trumpism arises from all three in somewhat equal measure?
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