07-02-2020, 03:23 PM
(07-02-2020, 02:30 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-02-2020, 01:52 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Trump is worse -- far worse. Trump is cruel, stubborn, despotic, and completely lacking in self-awareness.
Nitpick: I would go for narcissistic rather than lacking in self awareness, but I would second the rest.
People are not narcissists because they are self-aware. In any event I see narcissism as a common cold in contrast to the COVID-19 to which sociopathy and psychopathy are. "Narcissistic" understates Trump.
I once heard someone say that were it not for narcissism (the love of attention, the desire to appear on the biggest stage of all -- history, and the ego-rush of power) there would be no politicians. I consider Lincoln, Churchill, and FDR to have been highly self-aware. Self-awareness implies knowing one's
limitations as a person. Trump seems not to know that about himself. Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and Kim know how to exploit that.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.