THE NEW "S" WORD

 

Sociopathic: of, relating to, or characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior or exhibiting antisocial personality disorder

There are many words that can be used to describe Donald Trump:  liar, bigot, misogynist, egotist, narcissist. immature.  Another that really needs to be added is sociopath.   I don't put that word out there lightly, but I definitely feel that, time and time again, Trump has showed that he is lacking in the most basic human emotions other than anger and rage.

We've all seen the picture by now:  President Trump, visiting families in El Paso Texas, grieving from a mass shooting, took a picture with a baby, orphaned from the shooting.  And how did our president mark this somber, sad moment.  By grinning like an idiot and giving a thumbs up.  It's no surprise at all, really.  I'm sure in Trump's mind, this baby is lucky to be in a picture with him, the most important and god like person who has ever lived.  As conservative columnist David Brooks put it on NPR: 

…”I look at that photo and I think, well, he’s a sociopath.  He’s incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.”  And the context of that photo gets even worse when you realize that that baby was orphaned by a shooter who targeted hispanics and posted an online white supremacist manifesto that echoed many of the words that Trump himself has used in his speeches shortly before he began his killing spree.   Other presidents have dealt with moments like this with the right kinds of emotions: Barack Obama teared up while talking about children being gunned down in Sandy Hook, George W Bush (despite being a terrible president in my opinion) was resolute after 9/11.  But Trump cannot publicly express any emotion other swaggering pride and insulting exasperation.  And from all accounts, his lack of empathy for any living being other than himself publicly is exactly how he also acts privately.  Look at how his media coverage over the years has been filled with his constant womanizing and bragging about it to the press, with little to no regard for the women themselves as anything other as something to conquer and then disregard.  It's no surprise that twenty different women have accused him of sexual assault, or that he can blithely dismiss them all as liars.  Even his own son, Donald Jr., according to a 1990 article in Vanity Fair magazine, is quoted as having once yelled at him at the age of twelve “You don’t love us! You don’t even love yourself. You just love your money!” after his ugly and very public divorce with his first wife Ivana.  Although Donald Jr may have since returned to the fold, he really hit upon a truth back then; his father cannot express the tiniest bit of emotion of sympathy for anyone else.  From his constant bragging about the size of the crowds at his speeches to his complete willingness to embrace any conspiracy theory, (saying millions of undocumented immigrants voted in 2016, or that the Clintons may have had  Jeffrey Epstein killed), Trump is a human bulldozer who shoves aside anyone that does not adore him as much as he so obviously adores himself.  And the fact that his tax cut and trade war has hurt the very voters who propelled him to the presidency in the first place obviously doesn't matter at all to him.  In his mind, those voters are just stepping stones for him to reach his own greatness.So if Trump is an unfeeling sociopath, how could he have possibly reached the  White House?  Sadly, his sociopathic tendencies have actually helped him out enormously: his unfeeling nature allowed him to channel his lack of caring onto undocumented immigrants, which sadly tapped into the loathing and anger that drives the modern Republican party.  Now, there is undeniable proof that Trump himself has often employed undocumented immigrants at his own properties, and he probably couldn't really care less about them either way as anything other than a source of cheap labor. (Even his infamous "build that wall" rhetoric was something devised by his handlers as an easy to remember phrase for him to repeat in speeches.)  But before he announced his presidential candidacy he immersed himself in conservative media and found that "illegals" were seen as an easy shorthand for everything wrong with this country, hitting that conservative sweet spot of racism and xenophobia.  And he, of course, wasted no time in attacking Mexican immigrants in his opening campaign speech, branding them as "rapists" and saying that they were bringing "drugs and crime".  And now years into his presidency, whipping up hatred  hatred of immigrants, using words like "invasion" when talking about them, is still his signature move, because he knows that his adoring crowds will cheer him for it, which is all he really cares about.Naturally, there is nothing that the country can do but try to ride out this national embarrassment and hope that the hate filled rage that he has tapped into will not lead him into a second term in the White House.  If so, our nation, and indeed the world, will be greatly diminished both environmentally and economically.