Currently I'm reading the biography "T
rump Revealed, an American journey of ambition, ego, money and power" by Michael Kranish & Marc Fisher. Not a bad effort although I started to read it to track down one quote about human energy (battery depletion) but found the biography did not manage to source it, while dozens of leading newspapers worldwide based articles on that quote, which in the end was not researched by anyone, while padding the text, instead of doing any research, with all kinds of proven benefits of exercise for body energy. This is, it seems to me, how journalism works these days. But I digress.
The biography is overall still quite interesting (
PM if you want to borrow the PDF a while). One gets the impression it's impossible to invoke some category in which Trump would fit. Of course one could think of some typical dysfunction or disorder he'd qualify for but at the moment one would be found, many words and actions clearly contradict it again. The man has perhaps his own category: Trumpist Personality Disordering. Or something.
The image of a man who somehow, possibly purely on instinct, seizes each and every opportunity to move on, to somehow get the fundamental issue of a situation and
capitalizes on it. Could you call it genius? In some bizarre way perhaps. How to even start judging. But by the measure of the very society which birthed him: status, name, images of wealth or political rise, he's certainly "made it" beyond most. Is it about wealth? Even wealth is understood by Trump symbolically or intuitively more than cerebral or financially. Wealth is what other people perceive you're having, not what the numbers say in private. Trump always went with the
symbols: notorious, being talked about, always known to be busy with this and perhaps with that. Causing others to react and negotiate out of uncertainty and preempt all the possibilities. Which can be itself advantageous. And what's the difference between the accepted definitions of wealth or success and actually living in the most prime real-estate, shaking hands with everyone who matters, appear on the biggest TV-shows, put your name on various ventures which turn into success probably because of just that?
Does this mean Trump is the ultimate
con artist as, lets face it, the majority of the old US mass media and progressive ideologists insist? It depends on how to define the connected idea of "defrauding" the audience. Even Maria Konnikova[ (author of “The Confidence Game,” about con artists and the psychology of the con) would remark that the one being conned would likely be the most in denial of being fooled to that degree. But wait a minute! Trump campaigned basically on the idea the population was being conned by a political elite with failed policies. Would the same not apply to the supposed conned population, especially progressives? And wouldn't a con man not be the best to spot another one?
Then again, would a con man get a Rex Tillerson or Steve Bannon and other people with rather strong personalities and ideas aboard? Or, as some then suggest, they all might work loyally for a con organization which is in control but which would contradict the particular individual accusations and its particular psychology again! And would a con man make so many spontaneous gaffes or otherwise calculated attempts to make himself look like a buffoon on each turn? That contradicts as well the conning motive as Trump would have personally way more to gain to go for example the Obama route.
As I wrote before, Trump seems to operate in a category all of his own. If his life and accomplishments are all con based, so would the political game and society at large. Which would perfectly explain his rise to power but also means that all the resistance against Trump might be ultimately a projection, a revolt against the delusions and surreality of the very world we created. Is it possible Trump has, in some ways, a better, more realistic understanding of the shallowness and fickleness of the human mind and his self-created cosmos than many of his most vocal opponents? And a little truth can be more dangerous and effective than a lot of lies. In other words: Trump might intuitively (and not in any philosophical way) understand the ignorance of the people around him and because of this attacking his person becomes also an attack on the very delusional system which made Trump possible. Which could be debated, by wiser people, if that's in the end something to encourage or not. But the Russian Federation leadership, generally aiming for the downfall of the Liberal ("Atlantic") world ordering project, for certain will applaud and encourage any success as well as failure of Trump. Which has only confused more people since the paranoid nature of a West in decline has now found a new enemy to project! There can be only "one" truth, after all, say all radical universalists.