Thank you Mary Trump for this
I’m grateful to Mary L. Trump for many things, like reminding me that I should refer to Donald Trump as a mass murderer. I used to do that quite a lot virtually every time I mentioned him, along with calling him a child rapist. But I fell out of the habit. Evil can be fatiguing. I’ll try to do better next time.
I’m also grateful she reminded me that much of the trouble we’re in right now is thanks to millions of people working night and day to save that mass murdering, child raping, pussy grabbing traitor’s ego. Losing to “the likes of” Joe Biden was the most humiliating thing that ever happened to the mass murderer. But because he’s a narcissist, and a malignant one at that, Donald Trump has had to find another narrative, and the Big Lie is that other narrative.
As a survivor of two malignant narcissists I know one of the most infuriating things about them is their cheering section. Narcissists would be nothing without that ubiquitous gang of idolatrous morons propping them up. Writ large on the world stage, the malignant narcissist phenomenon plays out in terrifying and damaging ways. It plays out in the ongoing drama caused by and perpetuated by the Big Lie and what millions of people in the cheering section of the world’s biggest narcissist are willing to do to save him from a hurt ego.
The headlong rush to save Trump’s ego and prostrate themselves before him so he will love them is the principal motive of the Trumpist. It is a powerful, driving force. Do not underestimate the power of this force. It’s the force that drove Josef Goebbels to murder his own children. It’s the animating impulse of the cult of personality that inevitably grows up around the charismatic, power-mad leader. Ridiculous, inadequate, little men — like Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini — have exploited this force throughout history. Trump is just another one.
In her new book “The Reckoning, Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal,” Mary L. Trump explores the forces that were exploited by her infamous uncle, and how it has tormented and divided a nation and the world. “When we think of trauma, we typically imagine dramatic, violent, singular events – rape, a car accident, a mortar shell exploding,” Mary Trump writes. “Trauma can be quiet and slow, too, occurring over time in a tense drama of sameness, of hopelessness, of unbearable isolation and loneliness, of helplessness.”
Like Hitler, Trump would be nothing without his millions of followers and enablers. “It’s not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel,” Ms. Trump says, “it’s that he’s been allowed to be. Every transgression that has gone unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further.”
Will Trump run again in 2024? Ms. Trump believes he will if he can stay out of prison. That is the concerning question. Everyone who has dealt with a narcissist in their personal lives dreams of a day when they are brought down. Prison would be the ultimate fall for Donald Trump.
“I think that it would be a tragedy if Donald and everybody who’s enabled him and committed crimes with him was not held accountable,” Mary L. Trump says. I agree. The ideal of justice demands it. Whether or not the reality of a justice system that has traditionally and overwhelmingly favored rich, white men will make an exception in this case we will just have to wait to find out. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.