[FRIAM] Is the new president mentally ill?

Thu Jan 12 07:48:56 EST 2017

Jochen,
So much of that exists by default though. I find it distasteful to see the
president's picture in post offices and the governors' pictures at the
department of motor vehicles. If Trump has his pictures there, but they are
five times bigger, I won't be significantly more distasteful. And if I
drive to Yellowstone, and it says "Welcome to The Trump Yellowstone
Experience", it won't give me nightmares. To the extent that it is
tasteless, it is also inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. At
least, it won't worry me on anything like the magnitude of worry some seem
to be experienced while noting that the nuclear football follows him
around. And, as I said, to the extent that his pride is locked into people
thinking highly of The Trump Presidency Experience, one would expect a
functional narcissist to be ruthless in ensuring that things went in ways
that would continue to garner public adoration.... which generally (but not
always) means running the country as well as possible.

To the extent that, as you say, "Marketing is no way to make America great
again", it is hard to view Obama's Peace Prize as anything other than
marketing at this point, and many seemed to think at the time that the he
had somehow made us great before even entering office. Marketing has
(unfortunately) been an increasingly important part of the job for a long
time now, and if it something that is going to be done, it doesn't bother
me that it will now being done more openly.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician
U.S. Marine Corps
<echarles at american.edu>

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 6:34 PM, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:

> Eric I believe you are wrong if you believe you can have a narcissistic
> person on your site. A narcissist cares only for himself. The policy of
> Trump boils down to "I'm great and you're not unless you are like me,
> myself and I, you loser". There is no way how he can make the country great
> again. As Paul Krugman said America will turn into some form of
> authoritarianism, into a Trumpistan nightmare at best.
>
> Mr. Trump does not only have a brand, he *is* a brand, a brand that says
> "I'm great". If you stay in this Trump hotel you are great. If you play on
> this Trump golf course you are great, too. But it is just a facade. It is
> based on lies, and there is nothing behind the shiny facade except
> emptiness. Therefore he seems to hit back immediately if someone damages
> his image and his brand, because he ceases to exist if his image is
> destroyed. He and his brand have become undistinguishable.
>
> Marketing is no way to make America great again, Google has already an OS
> for ads, and the American corporations excel in marketing, especially the
> fast food chains. What will he do, build a Trump hotel in every city, a
> Trump golf course in every national park? This would be a total Trumpistan
> nightmare. Better than the nuclear apocalypse, but who would want such a
> future...
>
> -J.
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
> Date: 1/11/17 22:08 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Is the new president mentally ill?
>
> This is, overall, a strange concern, because you need additional layers of
> analysis. Functional narcissists do well because they have particular
> strengths, and when those strengths are on the side of third parties, those
> third parties tend to do quite well. To the extent that we can get Trump's
> narcissism to effectively feed off of the success of the country (which he
> seems quite willing to do), things will probably go quite well. To the
> extent that he is able to look at Putin and say "Who care's what you think?
> I'm president of the U.S., which is doing great by the way, terrific, and
> you are at the top of a crumbled empire," I don't think there is any risk
> of reaching for the football. A nuclear bomb wouldn't be good for the stock
> market, wouldn't help real estate prices, wouldn't help convince Ford to
> move that factory to the U.S., where Trump could do a ribbon cutting in
> front of an adulating crowd.
>
> People keep saying that he is quick to anger, holds grudges, goes on the
> attack to much, but, frankly, we are mostly talking about tweets here. Has
> he ever bought a company just to fire someone? Is there an implication he
> has ever had people killed who were suing him (something well within his
> financial means)? Has he started a company to bankrupt someone else in the
> same niche who pissed him off? Are we really afraid he will go from tweet
> to nuclear launch with no escalation in between? What past history
> of escalation do we have to suggest that is a thing to worry about? And, in
> the mean time, might we not get some countries to the bargaining table
> based on the perception that Trump won't rule nuclear launch out, who might
> not be dealing with us otherwise?
>
> If we are lucky, we have an effective narcissist on our side. If we are
> unlucky we have a reasonably competent businessman, in way over his head.
> Either way, I'm not worried he'll launch a nuke in week 2.
>
>
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Supervisory Survey Statistician
> U.S. Marine Corps
> <echarles at american.edu>
>
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 1:54 AM, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>
>> I posted this on Google+, since we have a lot of psychologists here you
>> might be interested too?
>>
>> Psychologists, therapists and mental health professionals seem to be
>> fascinated and terrified alike by the new president who has not only become
>> a brand, but is nothing but a brand:
>>
>> 1. he seems to be a textbook case of a narcissistic personality disorder
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-greene/is-donald-trump
>> -mentally_b_13693174.html
>>
>> 2. he was elected although he imitates the behavior of an massive
>> Internet troll
>> https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-embodied-mind/20170
>> 1/unified-theory-trump
>>
>> 3. he displays a total lack of honesty and truth-telling
>> http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/
>>
>> All DSM-5 criteria of a narcissistic personality disorder seem to be
>> fulfilled. Should we be worried? What do you think? He shows a clear need
>> for instant retaliation if someone criticizes him, which is obviously some
>> form a narcissistic rage. It is clearly more than a self-serving bias, and
>> such a deep personality disorder is not harmless at all.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias
>>
>> The problem is he is in a position where he can pull the strings now, as
>> the commander in chief of the most powerful army. The US has about 2000
>> nuclear weapons on high alert, and there is a soldier with the nuclear
>> football following the president at all times. What could go wrong?
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football
>>
>> -Jochen
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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