Keith Olbermann recently rated Donald Trump a probable psychopath. What if he is? What would that mean?
Most people imagine that the heart of a psychopath must be filled with dark, bitter emotion. That’s wrong. Think what you see directly behind your head. Do you see darkness? No, you see nothing. That – nothing – is what is in a psychopath’s heart where caring should be.
People think a psychopath is a selfish Machiavellian. But a psychopath isn’t nearly as nice as Machiavelli. Machiavelli was all about thinking ahead, looking down the road, and maximizing his own position. You could influence a Machiavellian with credible threats. To a psychopath, bad things in the future are not real. He can appreciate them intellectually, but they have no effect on his emotions, and little effect on his decisions. He lacks fear except in the here and now. He cannot be deterred. Credible promises might work, but not threats.
Psychopaths lack conscience, embarrassment, empathy, love, pity, fear, regret over the past or anxiety over the future. They do have some of the other feelings. As one psychopath said, “I’m not a robot. I really get pumped up when I have sex or when I get into a fight.” A lizard could say as much, if a lizard could talk.
Psychopaths are natural born liars. They hold your hand, look you in the eye, and speak as if their conscience were spotless. They are in fact completely untroubled by a bad conscience, because they don’t have one. Since they have no feeling for the future, they are not worried about being caught. Once caught, they will not suffer embarrassment.
Glib, superficial charm has been considered a hallmark of psychopathy since Hervey Cleckley wrote “The Mask of Sanity” in 1941. You can see what the charm is. Psychopaths are without anxiety, so they are relaxed and easy. It can be nice to be around them. They smile. They flatter when they want something, and they are plausible because they seem sincere. Victims may only guess the truth when the psychopath’s actions do not match his words. It is hard to imagine that someone who smiles so easily could be mean. Even wives can be fooled.
What do psychopaths want? They are bored most of the time, so they need intense action in order to feel alive. This is one reason for their involvement in crime. They make up about one percent of the general population, but twenty percent of convicted criminals. They are fearless. Their goals are vivid in their minds, while the risk of pursuing the goals is hardly felt and pity for others doesn’t factor. However, not all psychopaths are criminals. Some get the excitement they crave from physical risk-taking, or sports, or gambling, or successful deceptions in business, or lawsuits, or seductions.
Psychopaths care deeply about status. They enjoy inflicting humiliating defeats on other people. Their self-esteem is epic but they want others’ esteem too. They over-rate their own standing. Even as children, they think others like and admire them, whether they do or not. Any criticism is cause for righteous indignation. A psychopath may feel justified in killing a man for laughing at him.
Rules mean nothing to a psychopath. He may apply them to other people but not to himself. He will even cheat in a game like golf, where he can expect to be caught. Asked to solve a maze, one psychopathic inmate took his pencil and drew a straight line from the start to the finish, crossing every line along the way. We could expect a psychopathic president to treat the Constitution the same way.
What would a psychopathic president do? We can’t know. He would have no moral compass, and his promises would mean nothing. We can anticipate two preferences: adventure and self-aggrandizement. In any policy choice, a psychopath would tend to see opportunities and be blind to risks. He might threaten other nations sure in the belief that they would cave in. If they didn’t, then there might be a trade war or a shooting war. He might undertake radical experimentation with the economy, without worry about the downside risk. He would not worry about climate destruction, because he would not worry about anything.
Is this what we want in a president?