Credit where due to Chuck Todd, who made an interesting observation about neo- fascist sociopath Donald "Rump" Trump in Politico's podcast "Off Message" (via Raw Story):
Todd also opened up to Politico about the one thing that bugs him most about Trump — he doesn’t laugh and it drives Todd “crazy.” He said, “Do you know what? I’ve never seen him laugh.”
“He’ll smile, but he smiles appropriately. Watch him at the Al Smith dinner [the roast in New York City in October] … He doesn’t really laugh. He looks for others to laugh. It is just weird.” (our emphasis)Have you ever seen Rump laugh? Neither have we.
Now, we're not psychoanalysts (we only play them in this blog). But, this rather startling observation struck us, too, as very odd. We already know Rump is suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Might he also be suffering from a condition on the mild/ high functioning autism spectrum -- Asperger syndrome? Here's what caught our eye about characteristics of people with that developmental disorder:
Although individuals with Asperger syndrome acquire language skills without significant general delay and their speech typically lacks significant abnormalities, language acquisition and use is often atypical. Abnormalities include verbosity, abrupt transitions, literal interpretations and miscomprehension of nuance, use of metaphor meaningful only to the speaker, auditory perception deficits, unusually pedantic, formal or idiosyncratic speech, and oddities in loudness, pitch, intonation, prosody, and rhythm. [snip]
... Speech may convey a sense of incoherence; the conversational style often includes monologues about topics that bore the listener, fails to provide context for comments, or fails to suppress internal thoughts. Individuals with AS may fail to detect whether the listener is interested or engaged in the conversation. The speaker's conclusion or point may never be made, and attempts by the listener to elaborate on the speech's content or logic, or to shift to related topics, are often unsuccessful. [snip]
... Although individuals with AS usually understand the cognitive basis of humor, they seem to lack understanding of the intent of humor to share enjoyment with others. Despite strong evidence of impaired humor appreciation, anecdotal reports of humor in individuals with AS seem to challenge some psychological theories of AS and autism."Diagnosing" from afar is typically unsound. Had Rump been subject to an impartial medical examination from someone other than this quack, there might be information that would add to the picture of this clearly unstable, unfit thing that's about to become the unpresident. However, like Rump's taxes, a medical/ psychological profile is not something we're likely ever to see. But wouldn't it be worth a professional looking into the signs Rump is displaying, and why something as natural and human as laughter is seemingly beyond his capacity?
