Donald Trump: "Beneath Every Narcissist Is A Scared Kid"

Trumpery will not make America great again.

trump·er·y

ˈtrəmp(ə)rē/

archaic

noun

1. 1.

   attractive articles of little value or use.

   • 
     

adjective

1. 1.

   showy but worthless.

   "trumpery jewelry"

Beneath every narcissist is a scared kid

But those who live by personal appeal die by personal appeal.

http://www.vox.com/2016/1/8/10732496/donald-trump-implode

You don't have to be a psychologist to understand what's really going on with Trump. His entire career, like his campaign, has been about declaring his awesomeness and forcing others to acknowledge it. He has surrounded himself with trophy wives, sycophants, and his own name, everywhere he looks. He built a whole TV show premised on the idea that he's a savvy, decisive business executive, harvesting obeisance from the rotating cast of supplicants. It is overcompensation on a world-historical scale.

At the root of this kind of narcissism is always the same thing: a vast, yawning chasm of need, a hunger for approval and validation that is never sated. Down there in the lizard brain, it's fear: fear of being left out, laughed at, or looked down on, fear of never belonging, never being accepted, no matter how many towers you build.

The fear can only be calmed by validation, by accumulating visible markers of success until no one can laugh at you. There's a submerged glacier of insecurity beneath every blowhard. (I fear that conservative primary voters, as a class, are insufficiently aware of this important fact.)

The inside of Trump's head, basically.

Trump has built a life around being constantly validated, and his primary run so far has only seen him in that mode: winning, punching down at weaker opponents, being showered with adoration.

But the thing about politics is it's not an episode of The Apprentice. Despite the evidence of the past few months, it is not designed to make Donald Trump feel important and powerful. Sooner or later, everyone in politics is humbled. Everyone loses, at least a news cycle or two. Every politician has to eat shit, more than once, and smile through it. Eventually they must decide that eating all the shit is worth it for the chance to do some good.

That's what Obama was getting at in this interview — if people running for president don't have a powerful desire to make the country better, it's not going to be worth it. "If you are interested just because you like the title or you like the trappings or you like the power or the fame or the celebrity," he said, "that side of it wears off pretty quick."

Trump, however, is not willing to eat shit for the greater good. His enormous ego is, like the ego of every blowhard, incredibly tender. He legendarily never forgets a slight. Twenty-five years ago, Vanity Fair editor Grayson Carter called Trump a "short-fingered vulgarian," and to this day it rankles Trump. He sends Carter pictures of his fingers, insisting they are normal size. Really!

Even today, Trump's rallies have become long, discursive rambles in which he addresses and rebuts every single accusation cast at him by his detractors. (Responding to criticisms of his rhetoric: "I went to an Ivy League school. I’m very highly educated. I know words, I have the best words.") He can't let go of any slight. His whole life has been devoted to refuting those who doubt the awesomeness of Trump.