[Vision2020] Is Trump Getting Even Trumpier?

[Nicholas Gier]

Trump Is Getting Even Trumpier!
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html>

David Brooks <http://www.nytimes.com/column/david-brooks> JULY 19, 2016
Does anybody else have the sense that Donald Trump is slipping off the
rails? His speeches have always had a rambling, free association quality,
but a couple of the recent ones have, as the Republican political
consultant Mike Murphy put it, passed from the category of rant to the
category of full on “drunk
<https://twitter.com/murphymike/status/750833534324002816> wedding toast.
<https://twitter.com/murphymike/status/750833534324002816>”

Trump’s verbal style has always been distinct. He doesn’t really speak in
sentences or paragraphs. His speeches are punctuated by five- or six-word
jabs that are sort of strung together by connections that can only be
understood through chaos theory: “They want the wall … I dominated with the
evangelicals … I won in a landslide … We can’t be the stupid people
anymore.”

Occasionally Trump will attempt a sentence longer than eight words, but no
matter what subject he starts the sentence with, by the end he has been
pulled over to the subject of himself. Here’s an example from the Mike
Pence announcement speech
<https://www.c-span.org/video/?412804-1/donald-trump-announces-governor-mike-pence-running-mate>:
“So one of the primary reasons I chose Mike was I looked at Indiana, and I
won Indiana big.” There’s sort of a gravitational narcissistic pull that
takes command whenever he attempts to utter a compound thought.

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Trump has also always been a little engine fueled by wounded pride. For
example, writing in
<https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/how-the-haters-made-trump?utm_term=.okVzLrn6#.aj5qJoPx>
 BuzzFeed
<https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/how-the-haters-made-trump?utm_term=.okVzLrn6#.aj5qJoPx>,
McKay Coppins recalls the fusillade of abuse he received from Trump after
writing an unflattering profile (he called Mar-a-Lago a “nice, if slightly
dated, hotel
<https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/36-hours-on-the-fake-campaign-trail-with-donald-trump?utm_term=.qsn1ADWG#.feqVApEN>
”).

Trump was so inflamed he tweeted retaliation at Coppins several times a day
and at odd hours, calling him a “dishonest slob” and “true garbage with no
credibility.” The attacks went on impressively for over two years, which
must rank Coppins in the top 100,000 on the list of people Donald Trump
resents.

Over the past few weeks these longstanding Trump patterns have gone into
hyperdrive. This is a unique moment in American political history in which
the mental stability of one of the major party nominees is the dominating
subject of conversation.

Everybody is telling Trump to ratchet it down and be more sober, but at a
rally near Cincinnati this month and in his Pence announcement speech on
Saturday, Trump launched his verbal rocket ship straight through the
stratosphere, and it landed somewhere on the dark side of Planet Debbie.
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The Pence announcement was truly the strangest vice-presidential unveiling
in recent political history. Ricocheting around the verbal wilds for more
than twice as long as the man he was introducing, Trump even refused to
remain onstage and gaze on admiringly as Pence flattered him. It was like
watching a guy lose interest in a wedding when the bride appears.

The structure of his mental perambulations also seems to have changed.
Formerly, as I said, his speeches had a random, free-form quality. But on
Saturday his remarks had a distinct through line, anchored by the talking
points his campaign had written down on pieces of paper. But Trump could
not keep his attention focused on this through line — since the subject was
someone else — so every 30 seconds or so he would shoot off on a
resentment-filled bragging loop.

If you had to do a rough diagram of the Trump remarks it would be something
like this: Pence … I was right about Iraq … Pence … Hillary Clinton is a
crooked liar … I was right about “Brexit” … Pence … Hillary Clintons ads
are filled with lies … We’re going to bring back the coal industry …
Christians love me … Pence … I talk to statisticians … Pence is good
looking *… *My hotel in Washington is really coming along fantastically …
Pence.

Donald Trump is in his moment of greatest triumph, but he seems more
resentful and embattled than ever. Most political conventions are happy
coronations, but this one may come to feel like the Alamo of aggrieved
counterattacks.

It’s hard to know exactly what is going on in that brain, but science lends
a clue. Psychologists wonder
<http://jea.sagepub.com/content/34/8/1075.abstract> if narcissists are
defined by extremely high self-esteem or by extremely low self-esteem that
they are trying to mask. The current consensus seems to be that they are
marked by unstable self-esteem. Their self-confidence can be both high and
fragile, so they perceive ego threat all around.

Maybe as Trump has gotten more successful his estimation of what sort of
adoration he deserves has increased while the outside criticism has gotten
more pronounced. This combination is bound to leave his ego threat sensors
permanently inflamed. So even if Candidate Trump is told to make a normal
political point, Inner Boy Trump will hijack the microphone for another
bout of resentful boasting.
1280COMMENTS

Suddenly the global climate favors a Trump candidacy. Some forms of
disorder — like a financial crisis — send voters for the calm supple
thinker. But other forms of disorder — blood in the streets — send them
scurrying for the brutal strongman.

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Continue reading the main story
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/opinion/trump-is-getting-even-trumpier.html?emc=edit_ty_20160719&nl=opinion&nlid=29749741#story-continues-2>

If the string of horrific events continues, Trump could win the presidency.
And he could win it even though he has less and less control over himself.

-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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