This is a letter that I wrote to the editor at The Atlantic website in response to one of its articles. (Note, I’ve added subtitles and made a few tweaks.) The author, a psychologist, suggested that Trump was defying norms of malignant narcissism and is unique. I took exception to this. In fact, Trump’s personality looks scarily all too familiar…
One thing to note that I didn’t say in the letter, there are other things that we can do to help overcome these problems. Check out this great recipe for success. I don’t want anyone to feel helpless. On the contrary, it’s only by recognizing the problems and understanding them that we can then think about solutions, not just band-aids.
Also, I want to thank everyone for the amazing comments! They are extremely inspiring, and make me realize that I need to write other diaries, laying out the complexities of other related issues as we work toward possible solutions.
"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people." — Thomas Jefferson
Is It Just Malignant Narcissism?
I read the article "A Theory for Why Trump's Base Won't Budge" by Dan McAdams and am struck with a sense of how the focus on narcissism is a good start but falls short. It’s insufficient because it treats Trump as unique, severely underestimating or outright ignoring key issues as to why Trump’s base won’t budge.
While McAdams concentrates on narcissism, this disorder, as defined in the article, is not sufficient to explain Trump and his supporters. The author addresses this in the subheading “The president has followed the predictable course for narcissism in one way, alienating many who have served in his administration, and defied expectations in another, by continuing to attract an adoring core.”
I contend that some of Trump’s malignant narcissistic traits are overlapping attributes of additional disorders which other psychologists have pointed out. However, those disorders and narcissism are not the point of my response. While narcissism and other psychological labels are helpful to clinicians, they don’t help us to fully understand and deal with what McAdams called “the secret to Trump’s success with the base.”
Trump Is Definitely Not Unique
Therefore, we need to look at this in a different way. Besides studying human behavior and Trump, we must look much more closely to what is happening with his supporters. Also, we must examine history to understand what this all means: what leads up to certain events, what happens in those events, and what occurred as a result.
Trump and this phenomenon surrounding him are not as mysterious as they may seem. He is not unique. For much of my life, I've been warning people about the rise in the U.S. of someone like Trump, because we have history to show how easily this happens when governments no longer serve the needs of most of its people. Also, the Founding Fathers understood these patterns in history, as well as human behavior and what could clearly happen in these circumstances. In the Federalist Papers, they warned about how easily an absolute monarch could take over in such circumstances.
Indeed, using history coupled with human behavior for guidance, it was easy to see that Trump's appeal and election were very predictable. And his re-election is likely to happen.
Why is this?
A Description Worth Noting
A misogynistic demagogue contends that the existing political system is corrupt and broken (rightfully so) and promises, through the force of his personality, that he can fix the problems with a new vision for government. But he needs both a mob (of admirers and attackers of perceived enemies) and a propaganda machine that feeds this mob a continuous stream of lies to promote his message while disparaging other sources that might counter these deceptions. We can't disregard how important this propaganda machine is in swaying opinion. If people hear enough lies, many people begin to believe them. Repetition and timing are key.
Sadly, the easiest and quickest way to create a mob is to use bigotry to sway emotions. He uses hate, fear, and other similar rhetoric meant to dehumanize targeted people, casting them as the “other.” Then, using that bigotry, he makes those in the mob feel like victims of the “other.” People who are different than primarily white Christians (the ideal of the administration) serve as easy targets. The propaganda from the administration is to place the blame for job loss, low wages, and many other societal ills on the “other," playing into the mob's emotions. Hence, mob mentality is born, which explains how people are influenced by their peers to adopt behaviors based mostly on emotions, rather than rational thought. In this case, people are much more likely to do things as a group that they wouldn't do individually, which is what makes this so dangerous and difficult to overcome.
Here’s a psychological description written years ago, which very much applies today in our current situation,
"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."
On top of that, besides his primary rules, he exploits Christianity in a way that makes many of his supporters believe he is "the Chosen One," even though he doesn’t care about Christian values. We mustn’t understate how powerful this psychological influence is on many supporters.
As a result of all of this, certain people who are different from the perceived ideals are rounded up and sent to camps with jubilation from the ardent mob. Families are separated, and some children (who look the whitest) are put up for adoption. Also, democratic institutions begin crumbling, and people who stand in the way in order to stop the destruction are purged.
Trump & Hitler
You may think I'm referring to Trump, since Trump's administration has done all of this, including the adoptions. However, this is a basic blueprint of how leaders become dictators. In fact, my description of how this happens is actually referring to Adolf Hitler in the early stages of his regime. This was before the death camps (the Final Solution), which came about toward the end of the war when the Nazi's didn't know what to do with all the people they rounded up. And the psychological description was part of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) report, describing Hitler's psychological profile.
Don’t Use Euphemisms
While Americans don’t yet have death camps like the Nazis did, Americans do have concentration camps, as in the same sense the Nazis did early in Hitler’s regime. In fact, immigrants are being forced on planes (instead of forced on trains) and flown around the country to various camps to concentrate them. Euphemisms, such as “internment camps,” obscure what they really are, playing into propaganda through euphemisms. People and the press must call them out for what they are – concentration camps. This is one way to break some people out of delusional thinking because proper terms referring to Nazis and Nazism have a huge amount of emotion behind them.
The Dangerous Propaganda Machine
One thing to note is that according to scholars, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, said,
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Fox News and other right-wing media are the Joseph Goebbels of today. Roger Ailes created Fox News to prevent another Watergate-type scandal from impeaching and removing a Republican president. These media outlets have been using propaganda to poison people’s minds for decades in the same ways Trump has. They spewed all types of lies and bigotry, dehumanizing various groups, including Democrats. About two decades ago, as a result of this propaganda, I realized we were headed for the point where we are now. Trump is just a symptom of much bigger problems.
Right-wing media, which trends toward authoritarianism, has used the 1st Amendment to undermine democracy, helping to create an increasingly partisan atmosphere since the 1980s. Democracy can’t survive in the absence of truth, so it’s been easy to see this coming, especially since most of the rest of the press continues to parrot the propaganda.
To demonstrate how powerful propaganda is, I just saw some research showing that a large majority of people believed the impeachment inquiry information. However, after a week of propaganda, many dismissed the information. Such is the power of repeated lies. To counter them, the truth has to be repeated in the same manner.
Therefore, it greatly concerns me that McAdams’s article totally underestimates the power of propaganda. Without it and social media, Trump could not have survived.
Context Matters
While Narcissism is certainly a component of why Trump’s base won’t budge, focusing solely on it fails to properly account for all these other issues. And this article wasn’t the only one lately to raise my eyebrow.
Last week, I read an article from a psychologist who said that once Hitler was gone, people returned to normal. The implication was that once Trump is gone, everything will return to normal. The problem is that typically people don't tend to change their behavior unless some life-changing event forces them to.
Wrongfully, this second article took events out of context and implied conclusions that could be very dangerous. Instead, we must look at what happened leading up to Hitler's rise, leadership, death, and the results of it all. The German people didn't just change their minds overnight and reject white nationalism, etc. A terrible price was paid from Hitler’s election to his complete autocratic takeover and reign of the government, resulting in WWII and the previously unimaginable crimes against humanity – the Holocaust. Near the end, the German army was on the verge of a total military collapse when Hitler committed suicide. However, the heinous crimes against humanity continued, along with the propaganda and additional fighting in WWII until the German people were defeated in war with Germany’s total surrender a week later. Once the propaganda ended, they had to come to terms with what happened.
As with the early German situation, we shouldn’t expect that our current propaganda machine will end soon. In fact, compared to Hitler, Trump is in the middle stages of taking authoritarian control of the government. As for Trump’s supporters, many are radicalized whether it’s through various single issues, Trump’s lies, the rest of the propaganda machine, religion, or social media. Even if Trump leaves office, as long as the machine exists in such a dominant way, entrenched ideas will be difficult to overcome without either something terrible happening or a worldwide breakout of compassion.
Unlike Hitler, with Trump there have been no external events that are negative enough to change the majority of Trump's supporters' minds.
What has to be overcome to get Trump’s base to budge?
Enormous Obstacles
There are two large obstacles besides the problems listed above, both easily showing why Trump’s base sticks with him. First of all, there is new research from the Wason Center of Public Policy on the National Survey of 2020 Voters that shows 71% of Republicans surveyed believe that Democrats threaten the well-being of the U.S. This goes along with something else I’ve seen that many Republicans believe that Democrats are in league with Satan. In contrast, only 53% of Democrats think Republicans threaten the well-being of the U.S. Again, we can’t underestimate the power of propaganda in all of this.
The second large obstacle is that many of Trump’s supporters believe in Isaiah 45 as a prophecy of the 45th president (or that he is some other Biblical person, such as Jesus, King Solomon, or even The Lawless Man). Trump’s supporters have been deceived into believing that Trump is the Chosen One, just like many Germans believed Hitler was the Chosen One.
This Old Testament Isaiah 45 chapter refers to King Cyrus the Great of Persia, who was anointed by God, even though he wasn’t a believer. According to the Bible, his deeds were foretold by Isaiah, as God used this non-Jewish person as an instrument of his will, subduing nations and opening doors. Through it all, Cyrus founded a vast Persian empire. He also liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity to resettle and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. Therefore, he is a celebrated figure in Judaism and Christianity. Trump has been involved with moral issues and Israel in ways that make his supporters believe he is part of the prophecy of Isaiah.
There is one thing to note regarding Hitler and Christianity because it may pertain to Trump as well. Hitler’s remarks to confidants, as described in their writings, show that Hitler was actually anti-Christian privately, while his public support was solely pragmatic. Additionally, based on other evidence, various scholars believe that Hitler had plans to destroy the influence of the churches after the war.
How does truth overcome issues of faith when people believe Trump is the Chosen One or that Republicans believe that Democrats represent a significant threat to the well-being of the U.S.?
Breaking through Delusions
It's going to take something devastating to Trump’s base to break this delusion. We shouldn’t count on an election to break the spell, even if Democrats win and Trump disappears from public view, which seems very unlikely. Delusions will still remain as long as the propaganda machine is dominant.
One place to begin breaking the spell of propaganda is to stop using euphemisms and start talking about concentration camps, along with using other comparisons to Nazis and Hitler, etc. Basically, people need to be constantly jolted into reality, along with the possible future dangers of full-blown Nazism and fascism. Also, the press needs to take responsibility for what and how they report, refusing to parrot propaganda, foreign or domestic. Also, lies by interviewees need to be fact-checked right away on air. If the press continues to undermine itself, it won’t exist as a free press.
Another way to oppose right-wing authoritarianism is appealing to the public’s emotions, pain, morality, and compassion. The Democratic candidates, for example, need to do this. People are much more likely to be persuaded when they feel they have something in common with the conveyor of a message. Logic takes a backseat. Democrats, usually terrible at framing conversations, have let the right-wing dominate in this area. Trump is a master of this. Democrats, take the conversation back and frame it, and stop abandoning the base. Talk to people like George Lakoff, author of many works including Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, for advice.
Yet a third area to focus on is to listen to people with different viewpoints. You don’t have to agree with opposing views, but we need to understand the issues others have in order to propose solutions. It’s going to take compassion to bridge the gap, not hostility. This is much easier said than done, but compassion is what breaks hate.
Big Warning
What is clear is that this all is a BIG warning about our future if we re-elect Trump. He will take a re-election as a mandate and consolidate even more power, shredding whatever is left of the Constitution. In fact, Hitler was already chancellor when he was elected as the German president, thereby consolidating power. The rest is history…
As I’ve told my children for most of their lives, “Never think someone like Hitler can’t happen here.”