Ein Kommentar über Trump bei Whatever:
I’m afraid, and I’m a straight, white, christian, middle-class male, so I’m one of the chosen people in Trump’s vision for America, but I am still very afraid of a Trump presidency, and my fear has nothing to do with party or politics. My fear is rooted in one single thing: Trump’s narcissism.
Go look up “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” on Wikipedia. Read it. I’ll wait…
All of that you just read, that describes my father in painful and exquisite detail. When you live with someone with NPD, _you_ are always wrong. If you disagree with them on the most minor point you are belittled mercilessly. You’re not just wrong, you’re told that there is something seriously wrong with you and that you need professional help. Or that you’re stupid. You are always inferior to a person with NPD. They learn your psychological and emotional weaknesses and exploit them to manipulate you into doing their will, behaving like they want you to behave. They have no empathy for others. They are completely unaware of other’s needs but hyperaware of their own. Your feelings either don’t matter or are invalid. If you complain about the narcissist’s behavior, _they_ say that they are the victim. Anyone who calls them on their behavior is persecuting them. They will belittle you to your face, then five minutes later deny they ever said what you say they said.
I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist, nor do I play one on TV, so I’m not qualified to make an “official” diagnosis of Trump’s NPD. But I lived under/with a narcissist for four decades. I know the signs and symptoms very intimately. It didn’t take me long to figure out my extreme discomfort with Trump; he’s just like my father. And now someone just like my father is President.
I want to emphasize that this fear has nothing to do with party. I’m registered as independent. I voted for both Democrats and Republicans in this election. There were Republican presidential candidates I might have voted for in this election: Kasich, Graham, Bush (I voted for his dad and brother), maybe even Rubio. I’ve voted for Democrat and Republican candidates for president. Sometimes my choice won and sometimes they lost. In none of those cases was I fearful of the candidate that won. I may have disagreed with them on a few points or many points, but I never felt that they would be a danger to the American people or the place of America in world affairs. It’s not a matter of Trump’s ego. All politicians have egos; you have to to aspire to high office and to do the work necessary to get there. It’s his narcissism.
If you’ve never lived with a narcissist, it will be almost impossible for you to understand the visceral terror I’m feeling right now. If you lived with an abusive alcoholic, you might have _some_ idea. Instead of fearing for myself, my brother, or my mother, I now have to fear for the whole country, the whole world. Narcissists destroy people’s lives and sanity, they destroy families, businesses, and institutions. A narcissist like Trump (or my father), shouldn’t be allowed to run a hot dog stand, much less a country.
So yeah, I’m afraid.