“The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys. And the second time, I run the country and the world.” -- the convicted felon Malignant Fascist, quoted in The Atlantic (no link $$), letting his full-blown megalomania flag fly. He stopped short of saying, "I run the country and the world... into the ground." What a sick, deranged narcissist.
There is a lot of surface stuff: The need for adulation, the skimming off the top and profiteering, worship of money and power, greed, gratuitous cruelty... But underneath it all I think I see a constancy to the sadness, disappointment and an abiding desire to revenge himself against a world that failed to see his greatness and fight for him in 2020.
ReplyDeleteHis deep narcissistic wound and ongoing collapse:
https://thepsyoflifeblog.com/2025/02/12/destruction/
Remember that, in the end, Hitler rejected Germany, and the Aryan race, as unworthy of his greatness. He called for the destruction of all of the touchstones of German life: Art, culture, monuments, architecture.
By that time there was little strength left to both fight the Allies and carry out this tantrum so only a small fraction of the plan was executed. But it shows how a malignant narcissist, a term coined by Frum to help explain Hitler and his ilk, generally have but one path.
Tump will, is doing, the same things. The details and mechanisms vary but not the general course.
Anon - thanks for those insights and the link. Good read.
ReplyDeleteSpot on. Hopefully we don’t follow Hitler’s and Germany’s example to its obvious end.
ReplyDelete