Cancer is not one disease. It is many diseases. Poverty is not just lack of cash. If it were only lack of cash, it could be solved in a heartbeat.
Narcissism is a disease. It approaches the complexity of cancer and poverty.
I am going to argue Donald Trump is not a racist or a sexist or an anti semite or a xenophobe. He is all of the above by the textbook. But those are but symptoms.
The disease is narcissism. This guy needs help. Just like guns should be kept away from the mentally unstable, the mightiest political office on the planet needs to be kept away from a suffering person.
The comic part is a narcissist is completely unaware of his situation.
Narcissism is not a character problem. If Trump were just a liar, you could say he has a character problem. But narcissism is a condition, kind of like alcoholism. Psychiatrists will attest to it. Only this one patient is in full public view. He keeps giving evidence every step of the way.
His racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti semitism all stem out of the affliction. Does an alcoholic love his family? Does he at least want to? What if he is not able to? Does it matter that he wants to?
When he talks hate speech, he attracts attention, and that feeds his narcissism. He feeds on that. It is a vicious loop. This guy needs help.
Is he a racist? Racist is that racist does. Racist is that racist speaks. So yes. He is. His hate speech is designed to defend structural racism and sexism.
But that is not his primary concern.
If you can not stay away from your smartphone for 24 hours straight without feeling withdrawal symptoms, you have a problem. If you have become dependent on your smartphone notifications so much that they feel like indispensable emotional nourishment to you, you are in the early stages of narcissism yourself, and you should be able to relate to Donald Trump.
