Trump is dangerous not simply because of his imbecility and unbridled narcissism, but because he lacks the core attributes of empathy and understanding that define the human soul.
Sociopaths do not have a soul, as far a I can tell.
Trump is far from the only sociopath in high office, for power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats. In fact, power inevitably winds up in the hands of sociopaths, because the sociopath will do whatever it takes to get power, while the normie will not.
Whether he's soulless, or not, he couldn't implement his policies unless others were equally soulless and are willing to carry them out, as well as those that proceeded him. Lets not forget Netanyahu helped orchestrate many 21st century disasters, as well as those that made his agenda are own.
Neten yahoo and Trump come out of the same sky god box that breeds a love of omnipotence.........a certainty of superiority....and ideas of a narrow road to heaven.
Snottery designed as Divine Revelation has to be the opposite of Soulfulness. Large souls love the creation.........too much to attempt to categorize it into great slave 'chains of being'. All life is holy.........or none of it is. Large souls don't pretend to capacities of categorization they have no need of....or look down long noses at anything.
Basically I don't support an article like this and it's basic thesis. It really negates all that came before Trump and the Biden administration that followed. You can't single out one individual for the destruction of whole countries that occurred during this 21st century. I'm no fan of Trump, but to understand what is happening now one needs to reflect on the horrors that preceded him, and those that followed after his first term in office. Also the degree of influence Israel has over our political agenda, especially through AIPAC which has only become stronger through multiple presidencies. Do I think Iran would be on Trump's hit list if Israel and it's lobby didn't put it there? No! There is a lot of blame to go round, and you can't single out one person that explains the horrors of this 21st century.
While I don't disagree with your take on recent history.......I do see Trump as such a blatant conclusion to America's history of global warmaking and general bullying, that he can serve as an instructive template for what has happened in America.
For sure, he is not the first 'America first' leader who has served the consolidation of American power around the world.......but then, many people, great and small have had a role in that sordid tale.
The thing about the present moment is that everything that preceded it has prepared the way for Trump and his current entanglement in Israel's genocide.
And make no mistake. The war against Iran is just the latest turn of the screw. America has been rotten for a few decades already.
Its just that, with Donal Trump, the vileness and the stupidity of the entire Judaic/Christian push for absolute power over the oil rich Middle East is laid coldly bare. It's too naked, raw and in our faces, not to see it.
So for those just now waking up.......it likely does present quite a horrific spectacle. And even so, Chris' meditation upon the loss of soul remains appropriate. Since most in Amerikkka have gone along to get along.....at least since Regan....they too may find themselves coming up a bit short..spirituality wise.
I never voted for Trump, or Clinton in 2016. I despise her and her love of war, and her giddiness over Gaddafi's death, and no doubt when she found he was sodomized by a sword it made her day. During Trump's first term in office when the democrats made a concerted effort to delegitimize his presidency with the lie of Russia-gate, as well as impeaching him in the house I came to detest them. I thought he was a rather innocuous character especially when you recognized what preceded him, and our Middle Eastern wars. Seemed everyone rallied round the hate Trump bandwagon and what came next, Biden, a Zionist. and his neocons picks like Blinken who offered no resistance to Netanyahu and his genocide in Gaza. Not to mention the unwillingness to confront the issue of Biden's senility which was obvious to me before he was even elected. Under Obama a coup in Ukraine and during the Biden years it's intent became clear and they used it as a battleground to try to take out Putin.. Of course I left out Bush/Cheney and their carnage and their lie of a war in Iraq and they even used Netanyahu's lie that it was on it's way to developing nuclear weapons. Trump does come across with an obnoxious sense of bravado, but maybe he's adopted a position, silly as it is, that is defensive which is based on the way he was demeaned and treated in his first term in office, a possibility. They even pushed the lie he wanted to overturn the reigns of government back on Jan 6, a lie they thought would never let him back in. So, now we have to deal with his sense of bravado no doubt made much worse during his first term. Lets not forget all those that preceded him who did Israel's bidding, leaving Iran the sole survivor on Netanyahu's hit list. The soullessness during this century resides with an America that over decades has allowed Israel to influence it's agenda including it's wars.
Can't argue with anything you say......both sides of the American duopoly are despicable when it comes to regime change plots, foreign interference and a sense of being God's messenger sent to deliver the official 'what's what' to us mere earthlings.
Truth is I hate a lot of Americans.......and despise the way weasel words have demeaned the English language......something I love and taught during my working life. Iran has a regime; America a government, albeit one that doesn't work. Iran's closure of the strait of Ormuz is a war crime, Americans bombing an elementary girl's school an honest mistake.
NATO is a defensive alliance, has no place in this current crime against humanity......no one in the west will say that publicly.........so perhaps not just in Amerikkka, but in the entire west..........double talk, and double dealing is what we do.
WE listen to John Mearsheimer a lot......find his analysis rational and clear......we only learned a week or so ago that he'd written THE LOBBY....twenty years ago. So we're all of us SLOW LEARNERS...and perhaps a bit senile in the privileged west.......thanks to our sound bite double talking Mainstream Media, under the heel of the Zionist billionaires .....still....
It does feel as if Trump 2 is some kind of nadir.....low point..........point of no return....and I can almost hear it: Under many people's breath, GO IRAN is being sub vocalized.
You are overthinking this. Where in Hedges piece does he "negate all that came before Trump and the Biden administration" or does he attempt to cover the history of "everything that has happened in the 21st Century"?
I don't see this as a history essay that needs to address the "horrors" preceding Trump (of which Hedges is well aware). This is a theologian and seasoned dissident writing about the soul, in an essay where Trump is held up, deservedly, as the waste product of the entire historical movement away from democracy, and as a man so morally corrupt, narcissistic, incompetent, and deranged that he clearly represents the apotheosis of all that came before him.
I am as enraged as anyone about Biden's blood oath to Zionism, but his domestic policy, such as it was, was still geared toward helping Americans. This counts for something, showing, if nothing else, that he, at the least, had a conscience. Trump's total, self-serving carelessness and greed, not to mention his refusal to do anything to provide for anyone but himself, is unprecedented in American history, making him the most obvious example of a leader without a soul and the most dangerous. Singling him out for his spiritual depravity is totally appropriate.
Well lets talk abut soul. I suggest when you respond to another and disagree you implement your own soul instead of adopting a demeaning attitude, which you have done, and present yourself as all knowing. In other words you are coming across as a narcissistic ass. Also lets mention your hands off approach to Biden, someone who claimed to be okay with racially integrating schools, but no bussing, which meant he was not okay with it at all. At one time he sold himself as someone who would build the biggest wall ever, so no one could come into this country illegally. As you must know he did an about face on that one. He also adopted Netanyahu's lie that Iraq was a threat since it was pursuing nuclear weapons, and convinced his fellow democrats Netanyahu spoke the truth, although Nany said she voted against it since she was on the intel comm. and knew it to be a lie. Too bad she didn't share that little secret that killed so many. How many Americans died for a lie? How about caring about Ukrainian lives, and not using them to bring down Russia, and kicking it off with a coup that wound up killing hundreds of thousand of lives?
I certainly agree with your premise that we should discuss without put downs......arrogance seems baked into what remains of most western 'souls' however. Perhaps decades of killing deviant 'souls' have hardened ours. For certain sure, being right is more important to many than either happiness or mercy.
And that power in the Capitalist ethos has now become best wielded by accumulating multiple billions of dollars, aiming ultimately toward the magic trillion. Talk about offerings to the feet of Moloch.
"Lord Of The Rings" in a nutshell. However, unlike the Hobbits, we don't have the option of chucking The One Ring in a fire and getting rid of the problem of power, once and for all.
Not only does power in our world persist, even if we don't use it, there are others who will, and we may not like what they do with that power.
I see power as like a giant pile of pure uncut cocaine. I wouldn't want it, wouldn't touch it, not if it was given to me, but as soon as word got out, there would be plenty who would do anything you can think of and plenty of things you never imagined to get their mitts on it.
HA HA! That's a good analogy. Power is a word. Like other words, there are different meanings depending on the context. Obviously we all want the power to light our homes. We need the power to move our limbs to get out of bed in the morning.
But yeah, political power, call it a drug or whatever you want to call it. Not only does it corrupt, it intoxicates. Enough of it triggers madness. That's why a constitutional republic is designed to prevent anybody from getting too much of it. It works until it doesn't.
Iran has a constitutional republic. They take it seriously. We don't.
But power is needed, and need not be evil. We all have power.......its part of being alive. Making everyone give up power so that a few white men can monopolize it, is part of the Soul less world we've all had a hand in building.
But what good we do achieve......much of it we won by exercising our power to build what at one time didn't exist. Like Schools....hospitals....farms...etc.
Demon worship............which interestingly enough, is always demonizing others they know little about. Externalizing evil fools them into imagining they're gods.
Aw come on now Feral.........old men should be seen naked more often. Rather cuts to the chase, in a contest they can't win....
But I disagree that 'inevitably power winds up in the hands of sociopaths'.
In a genuine democracy, the people would never choose Trump. In a genuine democracy, Bernie Sanders wouldn't be either such an outlier, or the only good choice open to voters.
A Mammon worshipping society seldom stays democratic for long.
That is a very good idea. Maybe a new national holiday, where everyone over 65 with more than $100,000,000 in cash is prohibited from dressing, one day a year. Big parade on Main Street. An object lesson to a public who have been told that if you buy our products, you can look young forever.
"...even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked"
It would be nothing more than a reenactment of The Emperor’s New Clothes . The crowds would see exactly as they are told and the ones who do see would cower in fear of retaliation and remain mute .
YES!!!! And once this parade becomes a yearly celebration, perhaps old men will appear looking like the elders they were meant to be, even naked, the spirit shining through.
All spiritual development comes through our flesh.........at some level. Old bodies could be monuments. Heke!
If it catches on, us old women will be right in there, organizing our own festival of the flesh triumphant. Such fun!!
What really bothered me, though, is the implication all of us imperfect and/or aged should at least be invisible if not eliminated entirely. Only airbrushed 'influencers,' the naturally gorgeous few (while their youthfulness lasts,) and the wealthy who can afford extensive plastic surgery plus botox should ever be portrayed publicly.
It's also a nod to locker room braggadocio and the fear that the degree of masculinity is directly related to the size of... Nice to see that belief reinforced.
Might be more interesting to ask why. Why the need for all those pointy, thrusty killer missiles and pointy, thrusty skyscrapers with capitalist pig names on them? Why the insistence on a hypermasculinized military to the point of caricature? What do they feel so inferior about they have to have this grossly excessive compensation?
Maybe they could place a gold-plated statue as portrayed in the visual where the White House rose garden used to be, next to the new statue of Christopher Columbus that Trump had installed.
I find this comment morally confusing. What does an absurd sexist comment add to the discussion? It seems rather undignified and not terribly respectful of the forum.
But it may well reveal something subconscious about where our understanding of power comes from in the west......sexual prowess is a metaphor for power...........even if the truth of sexuality is that when healthy, its much more a part of our Soul.
That so many mistake Lust for dirty thoughts instead of seeing its connection to luster, to light......tells us how far we've come from honouring the sacred flesh which is the only vessel through which any of us approach the divine.......or get to actually feel reverence for anything real.
Oh for sure. The evidence of his damnation is everywhere apparant.......as much as he desires to be the greatest...........he's a bonfire of the vanities.
Given the various possible definitions, I don't know whether or not the "soul" exists. But I look at the world around me, I do know that there is no god.
Indeed, I'm aware that Hedges is an ordained minister. While I have heard of Pew Research, I would need to know a lot more about their methodology, funding (i.e. its studies focusing on demographics of religions in the world is jointly funded by the Templeton Foundation clearly has a positive bent on religion & spirituality) etc. Admittedly, I don't have the time or energy to research further.
May I ask if you to explain what do you mean by "a person of faith"? I take it from your first sentence that you believe that there is a "god". I would honestly like to know more about this belief. What role does this god play in your life? All of our lives? Our world?
I look at the world around me, our history and current events and have concluded that, to paraphrase Epicurus - if god exists and he is good, then he is not omnipotent. If God is omnipotent, he is not good.
Thank you for your earnest curiosity. I’ve found faith to be a solitary path of discovery. I found mine by reducing the noise around me: no social media other than substack, no MSM, no Prime video, no Amazon…you get it. I wish you enlightenment in your journey.
Thank you for your reply. However, to be honest, and despite your best intentions, I feel that this is a "non-answer". I think that I understand the value of "reducing the noise" around one's self. However, your "solitary path of discovery" tells me nothing about this god. Nor does it encourage me to to explore and perhaps adopt these beliefs. Still, thank you for this sharing.
Putting the concept of souls aside, Trump is a monstrous sociopath who embodies the concept of evil perfectly. The old saying: The love of money is the root of all evil applies especially to Trump and many, many others in positions of power. If they are not stopped they will kill us all and the flora and fauna on this amazing planet and realm that we all inhabit. None of them give a fuck about us as they act like rabid dogs chasing all the artificial wealth they can. And they should be treated as such.
The reference to rabid dogs made me sad, as I'm a lover of dogs and have three rescues who teach me how to love.
Rotten people should be treated like they can't help themselves. We need to protect ourselves and them from themselves. I so like the idea of isolating these people on their own island, maybe with cameras a la Survivor, so we can watch what happens to evil people acting only on each other.
No disrespect to dogs as I love all animals and am currently fostering a 15 year old feline tuxedo girl whose previous owner could no longer care for her due to severe dementia. Her name is Zelda Louise and she teaches me love every moment. My reference to rabid dogs hopefully implied that these people are infected by a disease that drives them to madness that cannot be treated or rehabilitated and the only humane thing is to put them down. Regarding sending them to some island, I don't want to see some poor island destroyed as they go after each other. Nor would I care to watch them do it to each other. Just make them go away once and for all. But I certainly understand your feelings.
There was a time when I consciously chose to avoid using the term "evil" to describe any human being. It seemed to have a "religious" connotation that I wasn't comfortable with. Folks like Trump, Netanyahu et al, and of course many others before them, cured me of that. "Evil" and all of its most odious synonyms accurately describes these monsters
I agree. Yet i do not rate them even as low as a poor rabid dog; they are below ANY sentient life-form. They should be put on an island and allowed to engage in the laws of 'SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST" Let them eat each other and rid this planet of true vermin
The prophet of our time. For as long as I've been reading Chris Hedges, which is a long time now, I've tried to understand why our leaders have steadily become less empathetic, less subject to shame, and far less humble. Is it due to the rise of unaccountable billionaires, the Epstein Class (often one and the same as the billionaire class), or endless militarism? Neoliberal economics? All of them together? What we see now is fatal hubris.
Good question. Did you see Hedges’ interview yesterday of Mr. Levy, a journalist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz? In the interview Mr. Levy described the commitment of a majority of the population to a state of perpetual war and mayhem. He said a majority approves of what Netanyahu is doing. He also described a virtual media blackout in “the only democracy in the Middle East.” What he described was mass psychosis. It left me wondering how that happens. Being deprived of information is clearly one element — but still. Maybe some of it could be explained by examining cult behavior.
Committing oneself to a genocide........looking away from IDF snipers shooting Palestinian children in the head........can go a long way to eating out the soul.
Many in Israel are by now as soul dead as Trump. Maybe more so.
Do we need experts to tell us what we all should have realized at least a year ago, from the reports of genocide? Did you catch the one about the 6 year old, sole surviving little girl in the bombed vehicle.....calling on a cell phone to be rescued???
The Ambulance that almost got to her was bombed as well as the car she was in, a second time..........so there were no survivors. The bastards who heard her emergency call were Israelis. The monsters who authorized the second strike were Israelis.
I can't retain my spirit and cultivate indifference to the stories coming daily out of Palestine........those who can are on life support....soul wise.......with little hope of recovery.
A sick society??? Gangrene gone viral in most.....some time ago.
And don't forget the Stupidity........its the dumb ass arrogance of the terminally stupid.....the Pete Hegseth syndrome........that most dumbfounds me.
People who can't think, demonizing a supreme leader who I learned recently spoke four languages.....and read literature, including Les Miserables, in English translation. People who don't read, imagining martyring a country's religious leader would bring them to their knees.
We all pray you're right.......another bottom though might be NATO jumping in to help the creep who insults them, threatens to invade them, refuses to consult them, and shows the same utter contempt for their sovereignty that he has for Iran's.
It’s going to take 15-20 million people in the streets, continuously, and a general shutdown of the economy. This is where we’re headed. The hard part is convincing enough of the population to wake up and use their agency, and be prepared for some sacrifice, pain and suffering. Americans are out of practice at this, though the people of Minneapolis showed it can be done.
Yes, I do. We won't know for some time yet, but it's possible that the disaster of the past ten years will lead to a period of political and economic reform.
I think Chris Hedges and I would agree that capitalism or anyway the stage of capitalism we have shapes how people are through education and media. The people who seek power are rewarded with profit which seems to cause insatiable lust for more.
Sounds like it applies, Jenny. But I didn’t fully convey the depth and breadth of what Mr. Levy described. Like the high level of support for mass killing. The interview is pretty interesting.
"“Fathers and teachers, I ponder, ‘What is hell?’” Father Zossima asks in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” “I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
This is the plight of the soulless. They seek, in their misery, to make their hell our own."
Ventakesh Rao teaches us that, when you pull back the mask of the sociopath, strip away The Will To Power, you will truly state into the void because there is nothing else there.
I've been reading and re-reading Bros K for 50+ years. My if stranded on a desert island book. The French Protestant philosopher of hermeneutics Paul Ricoeur said sacred texts "have a surplus of meaning." That is, people in different places, in different eras, of different classes, ethnicities, ages, genders, spiritualities, politics, etc. find meaning in them. And discover new meanings as well. That's Bros K, too.
Your connection of the present to Dostoevsky's words is one of those new meanings--a deep irony in that this reveals soullessness as a hell of anti-meaning. You got me to think about what it is to live with a total lack of meaning. Of a life with no greater purpose than a self-aggrandizement which can never be enough because it's trying to fill nothingness. It takes, takes, takes because it has nothing to give.
Yes. It's usually only possible to feel compassion for them at a great distance.
Thing is, there's more of them about than most of us want to admit....and many are just minor demons, self satisfied and living materially for all to see.
Trump's greatness is the largeness he's achieved, inspite of having essentially nothing to recommend him. It's a kind of dark miracle really....and what he reflects for me, is a part of America. Large. Puffed up on its own greatness. But vacant....and more than a little dangerous in its certainties.
Not that we Canadians are all that much better much of the time.
For me empathy is the most important thing to have. I am not a very soulful person although I sometimes like to see it in others. I try to couple empathy with knowledge and understanding to make up for not being very soulful. Trump's greatest failing, as I see it, is mental illness in the form of an extreme personality disorder.
I love what you have to say about empathy, coupled with knowledge and understanding. Yet personally, as a retired registered nurse, I'm not clear in my own mind about attributing Trump's behaviour to "only" a matter mental illness. Empathy along with knowledge and understanding is absolutely necessary and warranted when dealing with folks diagnosed with mental illness. But there's something more at play with people like Trump... hence this is where the adjective "evil" has entered my vocabulary.
I'd prefer the term 'damaged' to 'evil'.......I think about Trump, with a certain amount of sadness and pity. He too was a small child once, utterly dependent on the world around him for sustenance, love, encouragement.
What he received instead, had to be pretty toxic to have ended where it has. He is desperate to pull white rabbits out of hats..........and all he succeeds in doing, for the most part, is creating one disaster after another.
He's almost like what you'd imagine to be the Anti-Christ......taking America to hell with him. Because??? Well, just maybe, because he wants to be loved, but confuses love with worship???
Mammon worshippers are more common among us than most of us wish to admit. A genocide??? Who cares???
I have no idea as to the accuracy of your description of Trump’s childhood and its outcome as per your first two paragraphs. I’ve not come across anything quite as sympathetic in my readings. Still, in my personal and nursing experience, both here in BC and in Brooklyn, NY, I have met, worked with, and/or cared for a number of fellow human beings who have suffered as much, if not more, of what you describe. I don’t doubt that there are many more such folks in both these countries.
The term ‘damaged’ seems to me to match the term ‘broken’ My understanding and use of ‘broken’ refers to someone in profound emotional distress with low self-esteem, chronic unhappiness and hopelessness. They frequently isolate themselves, display emotional numbness, and sabotage relationships. They may exhibit excessive anger alternating with deep, silent sadness. And indeed, their ‘brokenness’ may very well be a result of a traumatic, unloved childhood.
Again, I’ve worked with a number of these people throughout my life. Some manage to eventually move to a point where they are able to lead relatively ‘normal’ happy lives. Others continue to struggle that may result in run-ins with law enforcement and the ‘justice” system. Some are lost to drugs or other self-harms. Some may indeed express their anger/frustrations/unhappiness by making others’ lives miserable. However, personally I have never known anyone who came anywhere near Trump’s perverted behaviour and actions
Again, with or without the trauma of a terrible childhood and a world that was mean to them, there's something more at play with Trump and people like him. The word that expresses this for me is ‘EVIL’.
What you are describing for me are the real victims of our system....the little people who's needs never got met very well, sometimes due to nobodies fault but the poverty this system produces, and hides, behind a surface of material plenty.
I think the damage Trump so aptly personifies is more an extreme case of the damage of privilege. From all accounts, Trump's father was a pretty nasty patriarch, real estate racist........who did well with those 'assets'.
From my perspective as a teacher, Donald strikes me as a person who may well have begun with average IQ......but an extreme drive to succeed. My guess is he got the latter from a parent. In his world from day one, there were Winners (those who deserved worship) and losers (those who deserved contempt)
Donald can be seen as the average kid who tried hard and brooked no quarter....no way he was a loser.
Going for that kind of 'achievement' will create damage. It's the damage to the empathy system....you can't care for others, you're too obsessed with your own self 'improvement'.
Perfection in fact. Donald managed, in the USA system, to achieve exactly that. He was the winner, the butt that got to sit on gold toilets, and oppress the stupid apprentices.
AND AMERICA WATCHED, FACINATED BY EGO AND SADISM....I watched one episode and nearly puked...there were no values demonstrated, it was pure CAPITALIST BULLSHIT. With Donald as the Winner. And the bully.
I believe a love of money is evil. I don't believe in metaphysical evil, any more than I believe in a sky god or an earth devil. Human societies produce good people and damaged people.
For me, the really damaged people in the USA are pursuing that war in Iran just now.......with a genocidal Israel. They're doing it for Wealth and Power.
As we go along with them, for sure, a lot of our own children will succumb to drugs, alchohol, low self esteem, suicide, despair. It's an inhuman system. An expensive killing machine.
But for the most part, we're all stuck in it. In Canada, Carney is the best we can imagine. We pay more attention to the war, than we do to what he is doing to close down agricultural research, environmental safeguards, etc. etc. So to that extent, we're all a bit damaged..........a bit evil........if we must use that metaphysical excuse to kill.
In short: We're in Trouble in the West....and we're dealing with it by trying to destroy Iran. In other words, we're avoiding our own evil, by demonizing people we know next to nothing about.
Meanwhile, China is rising..........and electrifying away from the Fossil fuels that have made the west wealthy....so we're in some kind of regime decline.
No wonder Amerikkka chose Donald: Twice. To bad nothing he's achieved as done anything for his essential stupidity.
Wow Ingamarie. I'm guesstimating at least 400 words... maybe more. And I still have no idea whether you agree with me, disagree with me, or something else altogether. LOL
Sincerely curious... how much time per day do you spend reading and commenting on the various sites? I envy how prolific many of you regulars commenters are... specially considering the time they all spend reading in order to comment. I'm overwhelmed and to never get through all the materials that I want to read and sometimes pass out commenting because I just run out of time.
I type nearly as fast as I think Sandy.....so can go on.
I think we both see Trump as a disaster.
My reasons for avoiding the label of evil........is that my English/History degree taught me that whenever colonial empire's wanted to steal something and destroy the people that something belonged to.....they demonize their victims. I've been watching travel documentaries on Iran....a civilization older and more cultured perhaps than ours......we've demonized them for a few decades now.
It may well be true that people like Trump........or the Zionists in Israel, are evil.......not believing that others have a right to life may make you evil.....
But I've never known an evil child. So my question is always 'what happened' when someone like Trump appears. And another thing: many in the Democratic party have acted as bad when it comes to their foreign policy..........there's not much outcry about what America did in Venezuela....is doing in Cuba.....in either party.
So as bad as Trump may be, he might also be more honestly who he is than many.........and still. Amerikkka voted him into office. Twice. Does that make MAGA evil???
Whatever you or I decide.......its a big mess, and far from over yet. Be well.
Is "soulful" the same as having a soul? I'm still none the wiser about what a soul is and worry there may be no soul, only the way the system shapes us.
Because we cannot, finally, externalize any evil or blight that humans might be capable of, it seems imperative that we all look inside ourselves, and inside our society just now........for the seeds, or plots of vacant ground, that have led to Trump. Because the mystery for me, a Canadian somewhat outside of the virus thriving in America, is not Donald Trump........but the society that spawned him.
He didn't achieve this emptiness or have it thrust upon him late in life. Donald Trump has been like this forever, though more handsome and therefore charming when young. He's been a cheat forever. His callous indifference to anything but his own appetites and desires has always been in evidence. What business or endeavor did he ever achieve uncontested success in?? How many bankruptsies, broken contracts, or exploitations of hard working Americans has he got away with in his life?? Hasn't it always been his ass on a golden toilet seat? His arrogance yelling "you're fired" to the delight of an American audience??
So for me, the real enigma of Donald's condition, his evil as it were, his soul less ness, is this: What about all that appeals to American voters? What has happened to so many American voters, good fundamentalist Christians among them........that makes Donald seem appealing???
The lack of spirit......the absence of the reverance that lovers of life can't help but experience, is a kind of poverty. A sorrow as well..........since the inability to love or care for anything, has to be a kind of hell. How has it come to so often haunt America, a country endowed with every advantage??
What in the name of the Great Mother went so wrong with so many Americans.......that they have brought us to where we are now?? Only a very large vacancy could have elected, twice, such a sad malignant.............and let's face it.........love hungry narcissist.....
I'm pretty sure Donald can't love. That seems obvious. But just as sadly obvious is his great desire to be loved..........and his almost infinite capacity to elicit, not love but loathing, from the majority. And as to History???
It won't be kind to him. And by now, he likely suspects as much.
If we all had the time and patience to have this conversation...Trump's existence might have had some purpose. And I love Chris for taking us on this journey of introspection.....
I keep wondering if there's a way to do it, without the name calling, the logical fallacies and the persistence of those two ideas, one of them wrong??
Conversations about what the ideal society might look, act, and feel like, might be a place to start..........there's so much that we need to rethink, redo.
sad thing is: it's not just #47. there are countless others. what about megalomaniac BIG TECH bosses, for instance? do they have souls? epstein 'classmates'? or senators, who say USD are never better spent than when they kill russians, or iranians? remember who said "iraq" was worth 500,000 dead kids? "death and destruction from above! ... kill them all!", remarks by the current 'honorable' US secretary of war. so much indifference to human suffering. the system that gives rise to both is deeply flawed.
He might not have a "soul" - I like Jeffery Sach's discription "malignant narcissist" - but he has something. He commands any stage he's on, as the 17 Republican 2016 Presidential candidates found out, ASAP. It may just be the attraction ot a Lucifer, I really don't know. But it exists, and it is mistake not to recognize it, IMO.
Well, he’s certainly given a lot of platforms by the media. He thrives on the attention. The media supplies his oxygen. Without it, one wonders whether he would just deflate, like a punctured balloon. More likely, he would simply commit evil on a smaller scale, on a smaller stage. Like when he was just a real estate developer and most of us had blessedly never heard of him.
Spot on; the "Devil" is not a repulsive monster, he's a very appealing and slick looking guy. He speaks well and knows how to appeal to others. And there are many gullible, ignorant takers
Before the class that now runs the world killed the President, John Kennedy warned of the danger of humiliating a nuclear power by forcing it into a corner. Today I fear that the petulant child in the White House has backed himself into a corner of world-wide humiliation that combined with his lack of a conscience will lead him to push a button to create “a beautiful massive blast the world has never seen, a thousand times better than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” We the people must attack the corrupt dullards and cowards of the House of Representatives, Senate and mainstream media. The Constitution includes a cure for the chaos we now have. But nobody’s using it. Weekend “No King” protests may give a wisp of achievement but they keep the focus on the clown in the Oval Office instead of on Wall Street, the media, the military industrial complex, bankster oilmen and elected officials sucking on AIPAC’s teats. If enough folks stop paying federal taxes, raising noisy hell at newspaper and TV offices and constantly get in the faces of the dullards sleeping in their offices we might deter the coming nuclear winter. Compared to the Boston Tea Party today’s protests seem to be an emoji. Hopefully, today’s protest are a sign that more Americans understand what is going on and perhaps will move from the streets to the offices
I agree with what you describe. But I am less than sanguine about the prospects, at least as things appear now. Emoji protests, from a minority, are probably all that can be hoped for from what this society and culture has become. I don't foresee change coming, unless insisted upon by the overwhelming majority, and only then when pressed to the wall by financial distress.
To echo others here, I, too, did not need to be reminded of ALL of Felon Trump's lesser...attributes. But you STILL gave him way too much, er, credit.
I more often these days ponder-how much longer will this dystopian nightmare go on? How much longer CAN it go on? Maybe until all of nature, of our resistance, of the very air we breathe, is gone. This demonic ignorant bastard does not care about anything because he cannot. Of course he is soulless. What's always bothered me is the millions of others who were presumed to HAVE a soul who supported and still support him. They must be so deeply aggrieved that they have given away their souls to follow this blight named Trump right into Hell. Trouble is, he's trying to take all of us with him.
And again, Mr. Fish-thanks for your fine work but-please go easy on the finer details from now on.
Thank you Chris for a fine piece of writing yet again. Much appreciated...
Until we face the full extent of the horror, we won't be able to see it clearly.
I rather think Mr. Fish did an excellent job. How many of us old codgers would look as good as we wish, were someone to paint us buck naked???
But surely that's the point.......this world shaker is just a fat old man.........a bit pathetic....but still. Naked we Came, and Naked we'll all depart.
Incarnate. Ensouled. The full extent, and limit of our power.
It is a tragedy for the entire human famioly on Earth that this man has been entrusted with powers and influence which his narcissism is not able to steward responsibly. We must rage, resist, and grieve this disaster for God's ONE human family and for the Creator's Earth and its groanings.
I appreciated this article deeply, because it brings us back to the levels of our being that truly matter — the enduring reality of the human soul. In a time when public life feels increasingly stripped of empathy, conscience, and moral imagination, it is a relief to see someone name the deeper crisis beneath the political noise.
Your piece touches the heart of what so many of us are struggling to understand: how the absence of love, goodwill, and basic human decency among those entrusted with leadership has created a vacuum that threatens our collective future. When those in positions of power operate without inner grounding, without humility, without any sense of shared humanity, the consequences ripple outward through every layer of society.
What we are witnessing is not only a political or cultural breakdown — it is a spiritual one. And unless we rise together to meet this ignorance with clarity, courage, and a renewed commitment to the soul’s values, we risk losing the very qualities that make us human.
Thank you for articulating this so plainly. It is a call to remember who we are beneath the fear, the division, and the spectacle — and to act from that deeper place before the damage becomes irreversible.
This terrific analysis by Chris Hedges (for which as ever many thanks!) reminds me of a study of Trump's mentality by the late psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton (who wrote "The Nazi Doctors" and several other studies of human depravity and cruelty towards others). Source at end.
QUOTE:
An important way to understand Trump and Trumpism is as an assault on reality. At issue is the attempt to control, to own, immediate truth along with any part of history that feeds such truth. Since this behavior stems from Trumps own mind, it is generally attributed to his narcissism (and he has plenty of that). But I would suggest that the more appropriate term is "solipsistic reality.” Narcissism suggests self-love and even, in the quaint language of the early psychoanalysts, libido
directed at the self. Solipsism has more to do with a cognitive process of interpreting the world exclusively through the experience and needs of the self.
Trump’s mindset is the very antithesis of ideological totalism: his ideas readily change and reverse themselves in response to specific situations. Such a relationship to ideas would seem to have nothing to do with ideological totalism. Yet, as different as he is from totalists, he too seeks to control reality.
Trump’s solipsism conforms to a tradition in psychology and philosophy for rendering the self an insistent source for all reality. With extreme forms of solipsism the external world and other minds cannot be known and may, in effect, have no existence. What results is continuous falsehood, whether of an almost automatic kind, or of the intentional form we call lying.
Trump’s presidency has followed a predictable sequence starting with an initial falsehood (Hillary Clinton’s nearly 3 million margin in the popular vote was derived from fraudulent ballots cast mostly by illegal immigrants). As the falsehood radiates outward it becomes increasingly difficult to defend, first on the part of the spokesperson who must turn the falsehood into truth, and still less credible as others examine its claims, until, in its journey through society, it becomes mostly recognized as patent untruth. Yet in the process it not only gets a hearing but lingers as something whose truth—or untruth—is repeatedly examined. To that extent, each of Trump’s expressions of solipsistic reality somehow remains “out there.” More than that, these falsehoods and lies may be ignored if not embraced by immediate followers who identify passionately with Trump himself, or by Republicans insistent upon holding on to Trump-centered power.
[ ... ]
... Is Trump’s solipsism, then, simply an extension of a cultural trend in American life? I would argue that it is something more. Despotic control over reality usually relates to specific goals, those having to do with the dictator’s holding onto power or furthering his pet projects. Trump is different.
His solipsism is sui generis. He is psychologically remarkable in his capacity to manufacture and continuously assert falsehood in the apparent absence of psychosis. Those suffering from schizophrenic psychosis, for instance, can also be highly solipsistic in their hallucinations and delusions. But Trump does not appear to have hallucinations or delusions in a structured, classical sense. That is, without being psychotic, he is just as solipsistic as those who are. He in fact manifests a considerable talent for manipulating his solipsistic falsehoods in ways that enhance his own narrative and connect with related political projects.
In that sense Trump has an extraordinary psychological capacity for sustained solipsism. Have we ever encountered a public figure who has so consistently reversed truth and falsehood and done so on so such a vast scale? David Leonhardt, the journalist who has probably done the most to track Trump’s lies, describes him (with co-writers) as “virtually indifferent to reality, often saying whatever helps him make the case he’s trying to make,” and as “trying to make truth irrelevant.”
It is difficult to overestimate the dangers that stem from such extreme assaults on reality by a man who holds the most powerful office in the world.
Does Trump believe his own falsehoods? The question itself suggests a clear dichotomy between belief and disbelief, which is not always the way things work. In studying people’s behavior under extremity, I have found that the mind can simultaneously believe and not believe in something, and can move in and out of belief according to perceived pressures.
I could witness that tendency in false confessions made by European missionaries accused of being spies and subjected to brutal versions of thought reform in Chinese prisons. ...
END QUOTE
From the late Robert Jay Lifton, 'Donald Trump: The Assault on Reality" first published in 2018, republished in his book 'Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry' (The New Press, New York, 2019)
Just to add to the above written by Lifton during Trump's first term, we have to add to all previous discussions of Trump's behaviour our now general awareness of his cognitive decline, amounting to quite clear signs of some form of dementia. So any previous personality defects and neuroses become intensified. As one psychologist has observed online, 'This is the best Donald Trump you're going to see', ie the prognosis is not good. Unfortunately his behaviour is going to get worse. We don't know if, when or whether appropriate authorities may feel they have no alternative but to intervene and halt the damage before it too gets worse.
IMHO THE TWIN MEGALOMANIACS, TRUMP AND NUTANYAHU, SHOULD BE PUNISHED — BUT NOT WITH ANY “CRUEL OR UNUSUAL” PUNISHMENT.
SINCE THESE TWO BILLIONAIRE BASTARDS SHOULD BE SIMPLY STRAPPED INTO AN EARLY AMERICAN “DUNKING STOOL”, AND PLUNGED INTO COLD WATER, SEVERAL TIMES, EACH SUNDAY — VIDEO TAPED, FOR ALL TO LAUGH, SHOUT AT, AND EMBARRASS THE HELL OUT OF BOTH ASS-HOLES FOREVER !!!!!
You Americans have to let go of these water boarding fantasies....they go back to the witch trials and were pretty stupid in themselves. Like......if the poor girl drowned, their mistake. If she survived, she was a witch and burned at the stake.
Sociopaths do not have a soul, as far a I can tell.
Trump is far from the only sociopath in high office, for power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats. In fact, power inevitably winds up in the hands of sociopaths, because the sociopath will do whatever it takes to get power, while the normie will not.
Also, I REALLY did not need Mr. Fish's visual.
Whether he's soulless, or not, he couldn't implement his policies unless others were equally soulless and are willing to carry them out, as well as those that proceeded him. Lets not forget Netanyahu helped orchestrate many 21st century disasters, as well as those that made his agenda are own.
Neten yahoo and Trump come out of the same sky god box that breeds a love of omnipotence.........a certainty of superiority....and ideas of a narrow road to heaven.
Snottery designed as Divine Revelation has to be the opposite of Soulfulness. Large souls love the creation.........too much to attempt to categorize it into great slave 'chains of being'. All life is holy.........or none of it is. Large souls don't pretend to capacities of categorization they have no need of....or look down long noses at anything.
Basically I don't support an article like this and it's basic thesis. It really negates all that came before Trump and the Biden administration that followed. You can't single out one individual for the destruction of whole countries that occurred during this 21st century. I'm no fan of Trump, but to understand what is happening now one needs to reflect on the horrors that preceded him, and those that followed after his first term in office. Also the degree of influence Israel has over our political agenda, especially through AIPAC which has only become stronger through multiple presidencies. Do I think Iran would be on Trump's hit list if Israel and it's lobby didn't put it there? No! There is a lot of blame to go round, and you can't single out one person that explains the horrors of this 21st century.
While I don't disagree with your take on recent history.......I do see Trump as such a blatant conclusion to America's history of global warmaking and general bullying, that he can serve as an instructive template for what has happened in America.
For sure, he is not the first 'America first' leader who has served the consolidation of American power around the world.......but then, many people, great and small have had a role in that sordid tale.
The thing about the present moment is that everything that preceded it has prepared the way for Trump and his current entanglement in Israel's genocide.
And make no mistake. The war against Iran is just the latest turn of the screw. America has been rotten for a few decades already.
Its just that, with Donal Trump, the vileness and the stupidity of the entire Judaic/Christian push for absolute power over the oil rich Middle East is laid coldly bare. It's too naked, raw and in our faces, not to see it.
So for those just now waking up.......it likely does present quite a horrific spectacle. And even so, Chris' meditation upon the loss of soul remains appropriate. Since most in Amerikkka have gone along to get along.....at least since Regan....they too may find themselves coming up a bit short..spirituality wise.
I never voted for Trump, or Clinton in 2016. I despise her and her love of war, and her giddiness over Gaddafi's death, and no doubt when she found he was sodomized by a sword it made her day. During Trump's first term in office when the democrats made a concerted effort to delegitimize his presidency with the lie of Russia-gate, as well as impeaching him in the house I came to detest them. I thought he was a rather innocuous character especially when you recognized what preceded him, and our Middle Eastern wars. Seemed everyone rallied round the hate Trump bandwagon and what came next, Biden, a Zionist. and his neocons picks like Blinken who offered no resistance to Netanyahu and his genocide in Gaza. Not to mention the unwillingness to confront the issue of Biden's senility which was obvious to me before he was even elected. Under Obama a coup in Ukraine and during the Biden years it's intent became clear and they used it as a battleground to try to take out Putin.. Of course I left out Bush/Cheney and their carnage and their lie of a war in Iraq and they even used Netanyahu's lie that it was on it's way to developing nuclear weapons. Trump does come across with an obnoxious sense of bravado, but maybe he's adopted a position, silly as it is, that is defensive which is based on the way he was demeaned and treated in his first term in office, a possibility. They even pushed the lie he wanted to overturn the reigns of government back on Jan 6, a lie they thought would never let him back in. So, now we have to deal with his sense of bravado no doubt made much worse during his first term. Lets not forget all those that preceded him who did Israel's bidding, leaving Iran the sole survivor on Netanyahu's hit list. The soullessness during this century resides with an America that over decades has allowed Israel to influence it's agenda including it's wars.
Can't argue with anything you say......both sides of the American duopoly are despicable when it comes to regime change plots, foreign interference and a sense of being God's messenger sent to deliver the official 'what's what' to us mere earthlings.
Truth is I hate a lot of Americans.......and despise the way weasel words have demeaned the English language......something I love and taught during my working life. Iran has a regime; America a government, albeit one that doesn't work. Iran's closure of the strait of Ormuz is a war crime, Americans bombing an elementary girl's school an honest mistake.
NATO is a defensive alliance, has no place in this current crime against humanity......no one in the west will say that publicly.........so perhaps not just in Amerikkka, but in the entire west..........double talk, and double dealing is what we do.
WE listen to John Mearsheimer a lot......find his analysis rational and clear......we only learned a week or so ago that he'd written THE LOBBY....twenty years ago. So we're all of us SLOW LEARNERS...and perhaps a bit senile in the privileged west.......thanks to our sound bite double talking Mainstream Media, under the heel of the Zionist billionaires .....still....
It does feel as if Trump 2 is some kind of nadir.....low point..........point of no return....and I can almost hear it: Under many people's breath, GO IRAN is being sub vocalized.
You are overthinking this. Where in Hedges piece does he "negate all that came before Trump and the Biden administration" or does he attempt to cover the history of "everything that has happened in the 21st Century"?
I don't see this as a history essay that needs to address the "horrors" preceding Trump (of which Hedges is well aware). This is a theologian and seasoned dissident writing about the soul, in an essay where Trump is held up, deservedly, as the waste product of the entire historical movement away from democracy, and as a man so morally corrupt, narcissistic, incompetent, and deranged that he clearly represents the apotheosis of all that came before him.
I am as enraged as anyone about Biden's blood oath to Zionism, but his domestic policy, such as it was, was still geared toward helping Americans. This counts for something, showing, if nothing else, that he, at the least, had a conscience. Trump's total, self-serving carelessness and greed, not to mention his refusal to do anything to provide for anyone but himself, is unprecedented in American history, making him the most obvious example of a leader without a soul and the most dangerous. Singling him out for his spiritual depravity is totally appropriate.
Well lets talk abut soul. I suggest when you respond to another and disagree you implement your own soul instead of adopting a demeaning attitude, which you have done, and present yourself as all knowing. In other words you are coming across as a narcissistic ass. Also lets mention your hands off approach to Biden, someone who claimed to be okay with racially integrating schools, but no bussing, which meant he was not okay with it at all. At one time he sold himself as someone who would build the biggest wall ever, so no one could come into this country illegally. As you must know he did an about face on that one. He also adopted Netanyahu's lie that Iraq was a threat since it was pursuing nuclear weapons, and convinced his fellow democrats Netanyahu spoke the truth, although Nany said she voted against it since she was on the intel comm. and knew it to be a lie. Too bad she didn't share that little secret that killed so many. How many Americans died for a lie? How about caring about Ukrainian lives, and not using them to bring down Russia, and kicking it off with a coup that wound up killing hundreds of thousand of lives?
I certainly agree with your premise that we should discuss without put downs......arrogance seems baked into what remains of most western 'souls' however. Perhaps decades of killing deviant 'souls' have hardened ours. For certain sure, being right is more important to many than either happiness or mercy.
Freedom, to have an opinion.
And that power in the Capitalist ethos has now become best wielded by accumulating multiple billions of dollars, aiming ultimately toward the magic trillion. Talk about offerings to the feet of Moloch.
"Lord Of The Rings" in a nutshell. However, unlike the Hobbits, we don't have the option of chucking The One Ring in a fire and getting rid of the problem of power, once and for all.
Not only does power in our world persist, even if we don't use it, there are others who will, and we may not like what they do with that power.
More likely we will not like it at all.
I see power as like a giant pile of pure uncut cocaine. I wouldn't want it, wouldn't touch it, not if it was given to me, but as soon as word got out, there would be plenty who would do anything you can think of and plenty of things you never imagined to get their mitts on it.
FF, that’s going in my quotes file. Excellent!
The Finster aims to please
HA HA! That's a good analogy. Power is a word. Like other words, there are different meanings depending on the context. Obviously we all want the power to light our homes. We need the power to move our limbs to get out of bed in the morning.
But yeah, political power, call it a drug or whatever you want to call it. Not only does it corrupt, it intoxicates. Enough of it triggers madness. That's why a constitutional republic is designed to prevent anybody from getting too much of it. It works until it doesn't.
Iran has a constitutional republic. They take it seriously. We don't.
But this is USA!
Question: We had Biden/Nixon/Clinton and all the others.........do Americans producee more psycopaths than any other nation? NO.
USA has always been about money.
Ever since I can remember. TV adds were brutal back in the '50s. Sell sell sell. Always.
But there you go. It you've always been about money...then of course America produces more psycopaths than any other nation.
Not all nations throughout all time have worshipped Mammon. Capitalism as we know it is a late phenomenon.
Amerika has won one revolution, maybe they do it again.
But power is needed, and need not be evil. We all have power.......its part of being alive. Making everyone give up power so that a few white men can monopolize it, is part of the Soul less world we've all had a hand in building.
But what good we do achieve......much of it we won by exercising our power to build what at one time didn't exist. Like Schools....hospitals....farms...etc.
Demon worship............which interestingly enough, is always demonizing others they know little about. Externalizing evil fools them into imagining they're gods.
Aw come on now Feral.........old men should be seen naked more often. Rather cuts to the chase, in a contest they can't win....
But I disagree that 'inevitably power winds up in the hands of sociopaths'.
In a genuine democracy, the people would never choose Trump. In a genuine democracy, Bernie Sanders wouldn't be either such an outlier, or the only good choice open to voters.
A Mammon worshipping society seldom stays democratic for long.
<old men should be seen naked more often.>
That is a very good idea. Maybe a new national holiday, where everyone over 65 with more than $100,000,000 in cash is prohibited from dressing, one day a year. Big parade on Main Street. An object lesson to a public who have been told that if you buy our products, you can look young forever.
"...even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked"
-Bob Dylan, "It's alright Ma (I'm only Bleeding)
It would be nothing more than a reenactment of The Emperor’s New Clothes . The crowds would see exactly as they are told and the ones who do see would cower in fear of retaliation and remain mute .
YES!!!! And once this parade becomes a yearly celebration, perhaps old men will appear looking like the elders they were meant to be, even naked, the spirit shining through.
All spiritual development comes through our flesh.........at some level. Old bodies could be monuments. Heke!
If it catches on, us old women will be right in there, organizing our own festival of the flesh triumphant. Such fun!!
I was thinking same about the visual.
What really bothered me, though, is the implication all of us imperfect and/or aged should at least be invisible if not eliminated entirely. Only airbrushed 'influencers,' the naturally gorgeous few (while their youthfulness lasts,) and the wealthy who can afford extensive plastic surgery plus botox should ever be portrayed publicly.
It's also a nod to locker room braggadocio and the fear that the degree of masculinity is directly related to the size of... Nice to see that belief reinforced.
Might be more interesting to ask why. Why the need for all those pointy, thrusty killer missiles and pointy, thrusty skyscrapers with capitalist pig names on them? Why the insistence on a hypermasculinized military to the point of caricature? What do they feel so inferior about they have to have this grossly excessive compensation?
I guess in this case, the ugly visual matches the hideous nature quite nicely.
Maybe they could place a gold-plated statue as portrayed in the visual where the White House rose garden used to be, next to the new statue of Christopher Columbus that Trump had installed.
Sweet Bastet's Tail.....
I want to see how big his penis is????
You go ahead. I could live my life perfectly happily without such forbidden knowledge.
Is this because men don't like the idea of seeing TINY penises?
I have seen a lot of macho men in my life..............they couldn't fuck a bird!
I find this comment morally confusing. What does an absurd sexist comment add to the discussion? It seems rather undignified and not terribly respectful of the forum.
But it may well reveal something subconscious about where our understanding of power comes from in the west......sexual prowess is a metaphor for power...........even if the truth of sexuality is that when healthy, its much more a part of our Soul.
That so many mistake Lust for dirty thoughts instead of seeing its connection to luster, to light......tells us how far we've come from honouring the sacred flesh which is the only vessel through which any of us approach the divine.......or get to actually feel reverence for anything real.
This is a Narcissist.....let's see what he has?
Indeed, yes; and I do pity his Proctologist.
Why Jenny? He's quite on in years and I can't image that his face aged and his penis didn't.
Ha!
Hmmm... what exactly do you mean by the word "need"?
Do you want an all access backstage pass to Trump's lockerroom?
I don't.
Nope. You'll have to send somebody else!
I wasn't going to comment, but since the topic has been raised... I thought your reaction was a bit prudish.
Oh yes please
Yikes! I wouldn't go that far lol
47 ordered the incineration of 500 tons of emergency rations that could have been airdropped to famine sufferers.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/07/usaid-emergency-food-incinerate-trump/683532/
47 ordered the destruction of 10M worth of birth control that was targeted for low income people in Africa who can’t afford another child. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/health/usaid-contraceptives-destroyed-trump.html
47 dumped billions of gallons of freshwater in CA that farmers and firefighters were counting on. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5287016/farmers-are-worried-after-trump-released-billions-of-gallons-of-water-in-california
Oh for sure. The evidence of his damnation is everywhere apparant.......as much as he desires to be the greatest...........he's a bonfire of the vanities.
He can't not do destruction.
America........we're praying for ya.
We can feel your prayers. Thank you. We need them.
Given the various possible definitions, I don't know whether or not the "soul" exists. But I look at the world around me, I do know that there is no god.
We’ll find out. I’m a person a faith, along with about 80% of global adults. Presumably, that includes the host of this substack (Chris Hedges is an ordained Presbyterian minister). https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/05/06/god-spirits-and-the-natural-world/
Indeed, I'm aware that Hedges is an ordained minister. While I have heard of Pew Research, I would need to know a lot more about their methodology, funding (i.e. its studies focusing on demographics of religions in the world is jointly funded by the Templeton Foundation clearly has a positive bent on religion & spirituality) etc. Admittedly, I don't have the time or energy to research further.
May I ask if you to explain what do you mean by "a person of faith"? I take it from your first sentence that you believe that there is a "god". I would honestly like to know more about this belief. What role does this god play in your life? All of our lives? Our world?
I look at the world around me, our history and current events and have concluded that, to paraphrase Epicurus - if god exists and he is good, then he is not omnipotent. If God is omnipotent, he is not good.
Thank you for your earnest curiosity. I’ve found faith to be a solitary path of discovery. I found mine by reducing the noise around me: no social media other than substack, no MSM, no Prime video, no Amazon…you get it. I wish you enlightenment in your journey.
Thank you for your reply. However, to be honest, and despite your best intentions, I feel that this is a "non-answer". I think that I understand the value of "reducing the noise" around one's self. However, your "solitary path of discovery" tells me nothing about this god. Nor does it encourage me to to explore and perhaps adopt these beliefs. Still, thank you for this sharing.
It’s a private path. When you have the “time or energy to research further”you may find what you are looking for. Peace out.
Thank you for writing what needs to be said!!
🙏
Putting the concept of souls aside, Trump is a monstrous sociopath who embodies the concept of evil perfectly. The old saying: The love of money is the root of all evil applies especially to Trump and many, many others in positions of power. If they are not stopped they will kill us all and the flora and fauna on this amazing planet and realm that we all inhabit. None of them give a fuck about us as they act like rabid dogs chasing all the artificial wealth they can. And they should be treated as such.
The reference to rabid dogs made me sad, as I'm a lover of dogs and have three rescues who teach me how to love.
Rotten people should be treated like they can't help themselves. We need to protect ourselves and them from themselves. I so like the idea of isolating these people on their own island, maybe with cameras a la Survivor, so we can watch what happens to evil people acting only on each other.
No disrespect to dogs as I love all animals and am currently fostering a 15 year old feline tuxedo girl whose previous owner could no longer care for her due to severe dementia. Her name is Zelda Louise and she teaches me love every moment. My reference to rabid dogs hopefully implied that these people are infected by a disease that drives them to madness that cannot be treated or rehabilitated and the only humane thing is to put them down. Regarding sending them to some island, I don't want to see some poor island destroyed as they go after each other. Nor would I care to watch them do it to each other. Just make them go away once and for all. But I certainly understand your feelings.
The "disease that drives them to madness" is capitalism and the cure is a different systemic organisation of society for the all the workers.
perfect! Great idea.
There was a time when I consciously chose to avoid using the term "evil" to describe any human being. It seemed to have a "religious" connotation that I wasn't comfortable with. Folks like Trump, Netanyahu et al, and of course many others before them, cured me of that. "Evil" and all of its most odious synonyms accurately describes these monsters
Why does anyone still talk of Trump? We all know who he is.
Stop talking about him and then see the mighty CRASH
I would very much like to put the concept of souls aside and concur with the rest of what you said.
I'd prefer we spent more time figuring out how we're producing them so profligately.
I've been much blessed by life.....find it almost impossible to hate........or fear..........for long.
But Donald Trump is a totally failed human being.......and I wish we knew more, were smarter, about what it was produced him.
Because he has a lot of imitators, avatars or whatever.
In fact, I think the shadow figures using him are likely worse.
Neten yahoo??? Now there's a monster, smooth as vasaline, but likely even more evil than bumbling DT.
I can't help but feel a great sadness for the colossal failure of a human being that he so clearly is.
I agree. Yet i do not rate them even as low as a poor rabid dog; they are below ANY sentient life-form. They should be put on an island and allowed to engage in the laws of 'SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST" Let them eat each other and rid this planet of true vermin
The prophet of our time. For as long as I've been reading Chris Hedges, which is a long time now, I've tried to understand why our leaders have steadily become less empathetic, less subject to shame, and far less humble. Is it due to the rise of unaccountable billionaires, the Epstein Class (often one and the same as the billionaire class), or endless militarism? Neoliberal economics? All of them together? What we see now is fatal hubris.
Good question. Did you see Hedges’ interview yesterday of Mr. Levy, a journalist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz? In the interview Mr. Levy described the commitment of a majority of the population to a state of perpetual war and mayhem. He said a majority approves of what Netanyahu is doing. He also described a virtual media blackout in “the only democracy in the Middle East.” What he described was mass psychosis. It left me wondering how that happens. Being deprived of information is clearly one element — but still. Maybe some of it could be explained by examining cult behavior.
Committing oneself to a genocide........looking away from IDF snipers shooting Palestinian children in the head........can go a long way to eating out the soul.
Many in Israel are by now as soul dead as Trump. Maybe more so.
Levy has called Israel a sick society.
Do we need experts to tell us what we all should have realized at least a year ago, from the reports of genocide? Did you catch the one about the 6 year old, sole surviving little girl in the bombed vehicle.....calling on a cell phone to be rescued???
The Ambulance that almost got to her was bombed as well as the car she was in, a second time..........so there were no survivors. The bastards who heard her emergency call were Israelis. The monsters who authorized the second strike were Israelis.
I can't retain my spirit and cultivate indifference to the stories coming daily out of Palestine........those who can are on life support....soul wise.......with little hope of recovery.
A sick society??? Gangrene gone viral in most.....some time ago.
Yes, I saw that story. Despicable.
Yes, important to note.
And don't forget the Stupidity........its the dumb ass arrogance of the terminally stupid.....the Pete Hegseth syndrome........that most dumbfounds me.
People who can't think, demonizing a supreme leader who I learned recently spoke four languages.....and read literature, including Les Miserables, in English translation. People who don't read, imagining martyring a country's religious leader would bring them to their knees.
Is it possible to be dumber than this lot???
No, I don’t think so.
We all pray you're right.......another bottom though might be NATO jumping in to help the creep who insults them, threatens to invade them, refuses to consult them, and shows the same utter contempt for their sovereignty that he has for Iran's.
What do we do if his senility is infectious??
It’s going to take 15-20 million people in the streets, continuously, and a general shutdown of the economy. This is where we’re headed. The hard part is convincing enough of the population to wake up and use their agency, and be prepared for some sacrifice, pain and suffering. Americans are out of practice at this, though the people of Minneapolis showed it can be done.
Do you know Leonard Cohen's song DEMOCRACY IS COMING, TO THE USA???
It could happen........though Cohen is no longer with us to see it.
Yes, I do. We won't know for some time yet, but it's possible that the disaster of the past ten years will lead to a period of political and economic reform.
I think Chris Hedges and I would agree that capitalism or anyway the stage of capitalism we have shapes how people are through education and media. The people who seek power are rewarded with profit which seems to cause insatiable lust for more.
I presume you are speaking of the US and the WHITE infidels?
Sounds like it applies, Jenny. But I didn’t fully convey the depth and breadth of what Mr. Levy described. Like the high level of support for mass killing. The interview is pretty interesting.
Indeed, very interesting
"“Fathers and teachers, I ponder, ‘What is hell?’” Father Zossima asks in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” “I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
This is the plight of the soulless. They seek, in their misery, to make their hell our own."
Ventakesh Rao teaches us that, when you pull back the mask of the sociopath, strip away The Will To Power, you will truly state into the void because there is nothing else there.
I've been reading and re-reading Bros K for 50+ years. My if stranded on a desert island book. The French Protestant philosopher of hermeneutics Paul Ricoeur said sacred texts "have a surplus of meaning." That is, people in different places, in different eras, of different classes, ethnicities, ages, genders, spiritualities, politics, etc. find meaning in them. And discover new meanings as well. That's Bros K, too.
Your connection of the present to Dostoevsky's words is one of those new meanings--a deep irony in that this reveals soullessness as a hell of anti-meaning. You got me to think about what it is to live with a total lack of meaning. Of a life with no greater purpose than a self-aggrandizement which can never be enough because it's trying to fill nothingness. It takes, takes, takes because it has nothing to give.
The 'void' is white meaningless fat pompous arses who seem to know better than others.
Noses aloft/words from pursed lips and derogatory words of anyone who is not of this class.
I've lived amongst them...................
Yes. It's usually only possible to feel compassion for them at a great distance.
Thing is, there's more of them about than most of us want to admit....and many are just minor demons, self satisfied and living materially for all to see.
Trump's greatness is the largeness he's achieved, inspite of having essentially nothing to recommend him. It's a kind of dark miracle really....and what he reflects for me, is a part of America. Large. Puffed up on its own greatness. But vacant....and more than a little dangerous in its certainties.
Not that we Canadians are all that much better much of the time.
For me empathy is the most important thing to have. I am not a very soulful person although I sometimes like to see it in others. I try to couple empathy with knowledge and understanding to make up for not being very soulful. Trump's greatest failing, as I see it, is mental illness in the form of an extreme personality disorder.
I love what you have to say about empathy, coupled with knowledge and understanding. Yet personally, as a retired registered nurse, I'm not clear in my own mind about attributing Trump's behaviour to "only" a matter mental illness. Empathy along with knowledge and understanding is absolutely necessary and warranted when dealing with folks diagnosed with mental illness. But there's something more at play with people like Trump... hence this is where the adjective "evil" has entered my vocabulary.
I'd prefer the term 'damaged' to 'evil'.......I think about Trump, with a certain amount of sadness and pity. He too was a small child once, utterly dependent on the world around him for sustenance, love, encouragement.
What he received instead, had to be pretty toxic to have ended where it has. He is desperate to pull white rabbits out of hats..........and all he succeeds in doing, for the most part, is creating one disaster after another.
He's almost like what you'd imagine to be the Anti-Christ......taking America to hell with him. Because??? Well, just maybe, because he wants to be loved, but confuses love with worship???
Mammon worshippers are more common among us than most of us wish to admit. A genocide??? Who cares???
Anaffordability??? Let's start a war!!!
I have no idea as to the accuracy of your description of Trump’s childhood and its outcome as per your first two paragraphs. I’ve not come across anything quite as sympathetic in my readings. Still, in my personal and nursing experience, both here in BC and in Brooklyn, NY, I have met, worked with, and/or cared for a number of fellow human beings who have suffered as much, if not more, of what you describe. I don’t doubt that there are many more such folks in both these countries.
The term ‘damaged’ seems to me to match the term ‘broken’ My understanding and use of ‘broken’ refers to someone in profound emotional distress with low self-esteem, chronic unhappiness and hopelessness. They frequently isolate themselves, display emotional numbness, and sabotage relationships. They may exhibit excessive anger alternating with deep, silent sadness. And indeed, their ‘brokenness’ may very well be a result of a traumatic, unloved childhood.
Again, I’ve worked with a number of these people throughout my life. Some manage to eventually move to a point where they are able to lead relatively ‘normal’ happy lives. Others continue to struggle that may result in run-ins with law enforcement and the ‘justice” system. Some are lost to drugs or other self-harms. Some may indeed express their anger/frustrations/unhappiness by making others’ lives miserable. However, personally I have never known anyone who came anywhere near Trump’s perverted behaviour and actions
Again, with or without the trauma of a terrible childhood and a world that was mean to them, there's something more at play with Trump and people like him. The word that expresses this for me is ‘EVIL’.
What you are describing for me are the real victims of our system....the little people who's needs never got met very well, sometimes due to nobodies fault but the poverty this system produces, and hides, behind a surface of material plenty.
I think the damage Trump so aptly personifies is more an extreme case of the damage of privilege. From all accounts, Trump's father was a pretty nasty patriarch, real estate racist........who did well with those 'assets'.
From my perspective as a teacher, Donald strikes me as a person who may well have begun with average IQ......but an extreme drive to succeed. My guess is he got the latter from a parent. In his world from day one, there were Winners (those who deserved worship) and losers (those who deserved contempt)
Donald can be seen as the average kid who tried hard and brooked no quarter....no way he was a loser.
Going for that kind of 'achievement' will create damage. It's the damage to the empathy system....you can't care for others, you're too obsessed with your own self 'improvement'.
Perfection in fact. Donald managed, in the USA system, to achieve exactly that. He was the winner, the butt that got to sit on gold toilets, and oppress the stupid apprentices.
AND AMERICA WATCHED, FACINATED BY EGO AND SADISM....I watched one episode and nearly puked...there were no values demonstrated, it was pure CAPITALIST BULLSHIT. With Donald as the Winner. And the bully.
I believe a love of money is evil. I don't believe in metaphysical evil, any more than I believe in a sky god or an earth devil. Human societies produce good people and damaged people.
For me, the really damaged people in the USA are pursuing that war in Iran just now.......with a genocidal Israel. They're doing it for Wealth and Power.
As we go along with them, for sure, a lot of our own children will succumb to drugs, alchohol, low self esteem, suicide, despair. It's an inhuman system. An expensive killing machine.
But for the most part, we're all stuck in it. In Canada, Carney is the best we can imagine. We pay more attention to the war, than we do to what he is doing to close down agricultural research, environmental safeguards, etc. etc. So to that extent, we're all a bit damaged..........a bit evil........if we must use that metaphysical excuse to kill.
In short: We're in Trouble in the West....and we're dealing with it by trying to destroy Iran. In other words, we're avoiding our own evil, by demonizing people we know next to nothing about.
Meanwhile, China is rising..........and electrifying away from the Fossil fuels that have made the west wealthy....so we're in some kind of regime decline.
No wonder Amerikkka chose Donald: Twice. To bad nothing he's achieved as done anything for his essential stupidity.
Wow Ingamarie. I'm guesstimating at least 400 words... maybe more. And I still have no idea whether you agree with me, disagree with me, or something else altogether. LOL
Sincerely curious... how much time per day do you spend reading and commenting on the various sites? I envy how prolific many of you regulars commenters are... specially considering the time they all spend reading in order to comment. I'm overwhelmed and to never get through all the materials that I want to read and sometimes pass out commenting because I just run out of time.
I type nearly as fast as I think Sandy.....so can go on.
I think we both see Trump as a disaster.
My reasons for avoiding the label of evil........is that my English/History degree taught me that whenever colonial empire's wanted to steal something and destroy the people that something belonged to.....they demonize their victims. I've been watching travel documentaries on Iran....a civilization older and more cultured perhaps than ours......we've demonized them for a few decades now.
It may well be true that people like Trump........or the Zionists in Israel, are evil.......not believing that others have a right to life may make you evil.....
But I've never known an evil child. So my question is always 'what happened' when someone like Trump appears. And another thing: many in the Democratic party have acted as bad when it comes to their foreign policy..........there's not much outcry about what America did in Venezuela....is doing in Cuba.....in either party.
So as bad as Trump may be, he might also be more honestly who he is than many.........and still. Amerikkka voted him into office. Twice. Does that make MAGA evil???
Whatever you or I decide.......its a big mess, and far from over yet. Be well.
Is "soulful" the same as having a soul? I'm still none the wiser about what a soul is and worry there may be no soul, only the way the system shapes us.
Because we cannot, finally, externalize any evil or blight that humans might be capable of, it seems imperative that we all look inside ourselves, and inside our society just now........for the seeds, or plots of vacant ground, that have led to Trump. Because the mystery for me, a Canadian somewhat outside of the virus thriving in America, is not Donald Trump........but the society that spawned him.
He didn't achieve this emptiness or have it thrust upon him late in life. Donald Trump has been like this forever, though more handsome and therefore charming when young. He's been a cheat forever. His callous indifference to anything but his own appetites and desires has always been in evidence. What business or endeavor did he ever achieve uncontested success in?? How many bankruptsies, broken contracts, or exploitations of hard working Americans has he got away with in his life?? Hasn't it always been his ass on a golden toilet seat? His arrogance yelling "you're fired" to the delight of an American audience??
So for me, the real enigma of Donald's condition, his evil as it were, his soul less ness, is this: What about all that appeals to American voters? What has happened to so many American voters, good fundamentalist Christians among them........that makes Donald seem appealing???
The lack of spirit......the absence of the reverance that lovers of life can't help but experience, is a kind of poverty. A sorrow as well..........since the inability to love or care for anything, has to be a kind of hell. How has it come to so often haunt America, a country endowed with every advantage??
What in the name of the Great Mother went so wrong with so many Americans.......that they have brought us to where we are now?? Only a very large vacancy could have elected, twice, such a sad malignant.............and let's face it.........love hungry narcissist.....
I'm pretty sure Donald can't love. That seems obvious. But just as sadly obvious is his great desire to be loved..........and his almost infinite capacity to elicit, not love but loathing, from the majority. And as to History???
It won't be kind to him. And by now, he likely suspects as much.
I wrote a comment before reading those already written.
I have long had the same question, but you asked it much more eloquently.
Thank you.
If we all had the time and patience to have this conversation...Trump's existence might have had some purpose. And I love Chris for taking us on this journey of introspection.....
You've got your work cut out for you for sure.
I keep wondering if there's a way to do it, without the name calling, the logical fallacies and the persistence of those two ideas, one of them wrong??
Conversations about what the ideal society might look, act, and feel like, might be a place to start..........there's so much that we need to rethink, redo.
sad thing is: it's not just #47. there are countless others. what about megalomaniac BIG TECH bosses, for instance? do they have souls? epstein 'classmates'? or senators, who say USD are never better spent than when they kill russians, or iranians? remember who said "iraq" was worth 500,000 dead kids? "death and destruction from above! ... kill them all!", remarks by the current 'honorable' US secretary of war. so much indifference to human suffering. the system that gives rise to both is deeply flawed.
Thank you for nailing the cause of the horror - the system. One need look no further. The system has to be changed.
He might not have a "soul" - I like Jeffery Sach's discription "malignant narcissist" - but he has something. He commands any stage he's on, as the 17 Republican 2016 Presidential candidates found out, ASAP. It may just be the attraction ot a Lucifer, I really don't know. But it exists, and it is mistake not to recognize it, IMO.
Well, he’s certainly given a lot of platforms by the media. He thrives on the attention. The media supplies his oxygen. Without it, one wonders whether he would just deflate, like a punctured balloon. More likely, he would simply commit evil on a smaller scale, on a smaller stage. Like when he was just a real estate developer and most of us had blessedly never heard of him.
He's good for clicks.
Spot on; the "Devil" is not a repulsive monster, he's a very appealing and slick looking guy. He speaks well and knows how to appeal to others. And there are many gullible, ignorant takers
Very well and good.......but still: Trump is none of those things. At least not any more.
Before the class that now runs the world killed the President, John Kennedy warned of the danger of humiliating a nuclear power by forcing it into a corner. Today I fear that the petulant child in the White House has backed himself into a corner of world-wide humiliation that combined with his lack of a conscience will lead him to push a button to create “a beautiful massive blast the world has never seen, a thousand times better than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” We the people must attack the corrupt dullards and cowards of the House of Representatives, Senate and mainstream media. The Constitution includes a cure for the chaos we now have. But nobody’s using it. Weekend “No King” protests may give a wisp of achievement but they keep the focus on the clown in the Oval Office instead of on Wall Street, the media, the military industrial complex, bankster oilmen and elected officials sucking on AIPAC’s teats. If enough folks stop paying federal taxes, raising noisy hell at newspaper and TV offices and constantly get in the faces of the dullards sleeping in their offices we might deter the coming nuclear winter. Compared to the Boston Tea Party today’s protests seem to be an emoji. Hopefully, today’s protest are a sign that more Americans understand what is going on and perhaps will move from the streets to the offices
I agree with what you describe. But I am less than sanguine about the prospects, at least as things appear now. Emoji protests, from a minority, are probably all that can be hoped for from what this society and culture has become. I don't foresee change coming, unless insisted upon by the overwhelming majority, and only then when pressed to the wall by financial distress.
To echo others here, I, too, did not need to be reminded of ALL of Felon Trump's lesser...attributes. But you STILL gave him way too much, er, credit.
I more often these days ponder-how much longer will this dystopian nightmare go on? How much longer CAN it go on? Maybe until all of nature, of our resistance, of the very air we breathe, is gone. This demonic ignorant bastard does not care about anything because he cannot. Of course he is soulless. What's always bothered me is the millions of others who were presumed to HAVE a soul who supported and still support him. They must be so deeply aggrieved that they have given away their souls to follow this blight named Trump right into Hell. Trouble is, he's trying to take all of us with him.
And again, Mr. Fish-thanks for your fine work but-please go easy on the finer details from now on.
Thank you Chris for a fine piece of writing yet again. Much appreciated...
Until we face the full extent of the horror, we won't be able to see it clearly.
I rather think Mr. Fish did an excellent job. How many of us old codgers would look as good as we wish, were someone to paint us buck naked???
But surely that's the point.......this world shaker is just a fat old man.........a bit pathetic....but still. Naked we Came, and Naked we'll all depart.
Incarnate. Ensouled. The full extent, and limit of our power.
It is a tragedy for the entire human famioly on Earth that this man has been entrusted with powers and influence which his narcissism is not able to steward responsibly. We must rage, resist, and grieve this disaster for God's ONE human family and for the Creator's Earth and its groanings.
As with Mr. Fish’s visual, perhaps it is best not to look; just contain the disease.
I appreciated this article deeply, because it brings us back to the levels of our being that truly matter — the enduring reality of the human soul. In a time when public life feels increasingly stripped of empathy, conscience, and moral imagination, it is a relief to see someone name the deeper crisis beneath the political noise.
Your piece touches the heart of what so many of us are struggling to understand: how the absence of love, goodwill, and basic human decency among those entrusted with leadership has created a vacuum that threatens our collective future. When those in positions of power operate without inner grounding, without humility, without any sense of shared humanity, the consequences ripple outward through every layer of society.
What we are witnessing is not only a political or cultural breakdown — it is a spiritual one. And unless we rise together to meet this ignorance with clarity, courage, and a renewed commitment to the soul’s values, we risk losing the very qualities that make us human.
Thank you for articulating this so plainly. It is a call to remember who we are beneath the fear, the division, and the spectacle — and to act from that deeper place before the damage becomes irreversible.
This terrific analysis by Chris Hedges (for which as ever many thanks!) reminds me of a study of Trump's mentality by the late psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton (who wrote "The Nazi Doctors" and several other studies of human depravity and cruelty towards others). Source at end.
QUOTE:
An important way to understand Trump and Trumpism is as an assault on reality. At issue is the attempt to control, to own, immediate truth along with any part of history that feeds such truth. Since this behavior stems from Trumps own mind, it is generally attributed to his narcissism (and he has plenty of that). But I would suggest that the more appropriate term is "solipsistic reality.” Narcissism suggests self-love and even, in the quaint language of the early psychoanalysts, libido
directed at the self. Solipsism has more to do with a cognitive process of interpreting the world exclusively through the experience and needs of the self.
Trump’s mindset is the very antithesis of ideological totalism: his ideas readily change and reverse themselves in response to specific situations. Such a relationship to ideas would seem to have nothing to do with ideological totalism. Yet, as different as he is from totalists, he too seeks to control reality.
Trump’s solipsism conforms to a tradition in psychology and philosophy for rendering the self an insistent source for all reality. With extreme forms of solipsism the external world and other minds cannot be known and may, in effect, have no existence. What results is continuous falsehood, whether of an almost automatic kind, or of the intentional form we call lying.
Trump’s presidency has followed a predictable sequence starting with an initial falsehood (Hillary Clinton’s nearly 3 million margin in the popular vote was derived from fraudulent ballots cast mostly by illegal immigrants). As the falsehood radiates outward it becomes increasingly difficult to defend, first on the part of the spokesperson who must turn the falsehood into truth, and still less credible as others examine its claims, until, in its journey through society, it becomes mostly recognized as patent untruth. Yet in the process it not only gets a hearing but lingers as something whose truth—or untruth—is repeatedly examined. To that extent, each of Trump’s expressions of solipsistic reality somehow remains “out there.” More than that, these falsehoods and lies may be ignored if not embraced by immediate followers who identify passionately with Trump himself, or by Republicans insistent upon holding on to Trump-centered power.
[ ... ]
... Is Trump’s solipsism, then, simply an extension of a cultural trend in American life? I would argue that it is something more. Despotic control over reality usually relates to specific goals, those having to do with the dictator’s holding onto power or furthering his pet projects. Trump is different.
His solipsism is sui generis. He is psychologically remarkable in his capacity to manufacture and continuously assert falsehood in the apparent absence of psychosis. Those suffering from schizophrenic psychosis, for instance, can also be highly solipsistic in their hallucinations and delusions. But Trump does not appear to have hallucinations or delusions in a structured, classical sense. That is, without being psychotic, he is just as solipsistic as those who are. He in fact manifests a considerable talent for manipulating his solipsistic falsehoods in ways that enhance his own narrative and connect with related political projects.
In that sense Trump has an extraordinary psychological capacity for sustained solipsism. Have we ever encountered a public figure who has so consistently reversed truth and falsehood and done so on so such a vast scale? David Leonhardt, the journalist who has probably done the most to track Trump’s lies, describes him (with co-writers) as “virtually indifferent to reality, often saying whatever helps him make the case he’s trying to make,” and as “trying to make truth irrelevant.”
It is difficult to overestimate the dangers that stem from such extreme assaults on reality by a man who holds the most powerful office in the world.
Does Trump believe his own falsehoods? The question itself suggests a clear dichotomy between belief and disbelief, which is not always the way things work. In studying people’s behavior under extremity, I have found that the mind can simultaneously believe and not believe in something, and can move in and out of belief according to perceived pressures.
I could witness that tendency in false confessions made by European missionaries accused of being spies and subjected to brutal versions of thought reform in Chinese prisons. ...
END QUOTE
From the late Robert Jay Lifton, 'Donald Trump: The Assault on Reality" first published in 2018, republished in his book 'Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry' (The New Press, New York, 2019)
Just to add to the above written by Lifton during Trump's first term, we have to add to all previous discussions of Trump's behaviour our now general awareness of his cognitive decline, amounting to quite clear signs of some form of dementia. So any previous personality defects and neuroses become intensified. As one psychologist has observed online, 'This is the best Donald Trump you're going to see', ie the prognosis is not good. Unfortunately his behaviour is going to get worse. We don't know if, when or whether appropriate authorities may feel they have no alternative but to intervene and halt the damage before it too gets worse.
DEAR CHRIS,
IMHO THE TWIN MEGALOMANIACS, TRUMP AND NUTANYAHU, SHOULD BE PUNISHED — BUT NOT WITH ANY “CRUEL OR UNUSUAL” PUNISHMENT.
SINCE THESE TWO BILLIONAIRE BASTARDS SHOULD BE SIMPLY STRAPPED INTO AN EARLY AMERICAN “DUNKING STOOL”, AND PLUNGED INTO COLD WATER, SEVERAL TIMES, EACH SUNDAY — VIDEO TAPED, FOR ALL TO LAUGH, SHOUT AT, AND EMBARRASS THE HELL OUT OF BOTH ASS-HOLES FOREVER !!!!!
LOVE
OVER
VIOLENT
EMPIRE
FOR JOHN:
“IMAGINE THERE’S NO EMPIRE”
You Americans have to let go of these water boarding fantasies....they go back to the witch trials and were pretty stupid in themselves. Like......if the poor girl drowned, their mistake. If she survived, she was a witch and burned at the stake.
You see the stupidity in this test I hope....