IN 2006, DONALD TRUMP made plans to purchase the Menie Estate, near Aberdeen, Scotland, aiming to convert the dunes and grassland into a luxury golf resort. He and the estate’s owner, Tom Griffin, sat down to discuss the transaction at the **** & Bull restaurant. Griffin recalls that Trump was a hard-nosed negotiator, reluctant to give in on even the tiniest details. But, as Michael D’Antonio writes in his recent biography of Trump, Never Enough, Griffin’s most vivid recollection of the evening pertains to the theatrics. It was as if the golden-haired guest sitting across the table were an actor playing a part on the London stage.
“It was Donald Trump playing Donald Trump,” Griffin observed. There was something unreal about it.
The same feeling perplexed Mark Singer in the late 1990s when he was working on a profile of Trump for The New Yorker. Singer wondered what went through his mind when he was not playing the public role of Donald Trump. What are you thinking about, Singer asked him, when you are shaving in front of the mirror in the morning? Trump, Singer writes, appeared baffled. Hoping to uncover the man behind the actor’s mask, Singer tried a different tack:
“O.K., I guess I’m asking, do you consider yourself ideal company?”
“You really want to know what I consider ideal company?,” Trump replied. “A total piece of ass.”
I might have phrased Singer’s question this way: Who are you, Mr. Trump, when you are alone? Singer never got an answer, leaving him to conclude that the real-estate mogul who would become a reality-TV star and, after that, a leading candidate for president of the United States had managed to achieve something remarkable: “an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.”
Is Singer’s assessment too harsh? Perhaps it is, in at least one sense. As brainy social animals, human beings evolved to be consummate actors whose survival and ability to reproduce depend on the quality of our performances. We enter the world prepared to perform roles and manage the impressions of others, with the ultimate evolutionary aim of getting along and getting ahead in the social groups that define who we are.
More than even Ronald Reagan, Trump seems supremely cognizant of the fact that he is always acting. He moves through life like a man who knows he is always being observed. If all human beings are, by their very nature, social actors, then Donald Trump seems to be more so—superhuman, in this one primal sense.
Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency
Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency.
Excerpt:
Wasn't one humdrum Replicant actor in the Oval Office back in the 1980s enough for at least the next two centuries ... ?
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Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency.
Excerpt:
Wasn't one humdrum Replicant actor in the Oval Office back in the 1980s enough for at least the next two centuries ... ?
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Additional Information: The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti
Dan McAdams: I was pretty sure I could find something beyond the surface, that I could find some interesting, deep-seated motivations, some goals, a life narrative. It was very hard to do.
... but Hillary is intolerable.
Why?
You seem to be confusing personality with objectives. I would prefer Bernie as well, but the US in not (yet) a Social Democracy. Bernie has broken the ice on the question - so we must be grateful to him.
Now it is up to the grassroots to complete the job. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is barely 15% of the HofR. You can't win political battles at that level. Were the CPC 30%, people would listen.
Were it 50%, laws would be passed. Were it a majority of 60%, political miracles could happen.
So, let's get out of the "business of personalities". It's a political war of sorts, about political objectives and how to obtain them. And it needs a damn fine general. But, as the Replicants did to Obama - without a Dem majority in the HofR - they will push any Dem PotUS into a corner and hem him/her in.
A PotUS just cannot do it alone ...
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Hillary has been the leader of the charge in Ukraine, Libya and Syria. Our policies in each of these Nations is detestable. The Clintons picked up the CIA taint in Arkansas with the Bush Cocaine/gun running deals. AFDC to launder the monies. Benghazi was about sending arms from Libya armories to Turkey to be delivered to Terrorists in Syria. Another CIA operation.
You are making insulting claims that have no basis in fact:
*The Ukraine was Putin provoking Obama, because he has an economy coming apart at the seams.
*Libya was a mess to begin with and a State Department head is NOT RESPONSIBLE for an attack on ramshackle diplomatic outpost in Benghazi smack-dab in the middle of a war-zone. And,
*If there is anybody responsible for Syria it is again Putin, who rearmed the Assad and gave air-cover to pursue the war.
Get your act together before making scurrilous accusations that are all over the board without any foundational base whatsoever ...
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Libya was a mess to begin with and a State Department head is NOT RESPONSIBLE for an attack on ramshackle diplomatic outpost in Benghazi smack-dab in the middle of a war-zone.
If there is anybody responsible for Syria it is again Putin, who rearmed the Assad and gave air-cover to pursue the war.
Hillary has been the leader of the charge in Ukraine, Libya and Syria. Our policies in each of these Nations is detestable. Benghazi was about sending arms from Libya armories to Turkey to be delivered to Terrorists in Syria. Another CIA operation.
You are making insulting claims that have no basis in fact. Or, if so, you are not presenting the "facts".
That is:
*The Ukraine was Putin provoking Obama, because he has an economy coming apart at the seams, and he wanted to grab back the Crimea (which Russia will have to give up for any inevitable peace treaty).
*Libya was a mess since the beginning, and remains a mess today. A State Department head was never responsible for an attack on ramshackle diplomatic outpost in Benghazi smack-dab in the middle of a war-zone. And,
*If there is anybody responsible for Syria it is again Putin, who rearmed Assad and gave air-cover to pursue the war. Assad has since been bombing innocent civilians.
Get your act together before making scurrilous accusations that are all over the board without any foundational base in fact whatsoever ...
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The claims are insulting and based upon facts.
... The same feeling perplexed Mark Singer in the late 1990s when he was working on a profile of Trump for The New Yorker. Singer wondered what went through his mind when he was not playing the public role of Donald Trump. What are you thinking about, Singer asked him, when you are shaving in front of the mirror in the morning? Trump, Singer writes, appeared baffled. Hoping to uncover the man behind the actor’s mask, Singer tried a different tack:
“O.K., I guess I’m asking, do you consider yourself ideal company?”
“You really want to know what I consider ideal company?,” Trump replied. “A total piece of ass.” ...
I think you are wrong in both above mentioned incidents ....
Syria was planned for many years. It is U.S. policy to break up countries within the Middle East so that they are too small to survive on their own without the U.S. at or on the throne of power.
I read the link in its' entirety and did not draw any particularly negative conclusions. I'm a Green and a Sanders man, but Hillary is intolerable.
Not nearly good enough a response.
Try harder ...
Looking at the facts, it is difficult to get it wrong. The people were fed-up with his antics.
He proclaimed that the "masses must rule" the nation. But if any dissident started agitating they would "suddenly disappear". The Libyans finally got tired of him and, all by themselves, they started a revolution. The country literally self-imploded, as different regions formed their own armies and declared independence from Qaddafi's state.
The reason the country is still in a mess is because these separate armies fought separate wars, and subsequently there was no common formation of an elected government that lasted. (Not to mention that in the subsequent chaos, ISIS poured in an small army of fighters who have since taken control of Benghazi.)
Wow, what a fertile mind for PURE FICTION.
Syria is a mixture of two muslim religious factions - the Shiites and the Sunnites (and some Kurds). The majority are Sunnite, the minority Shiites. Hafez al-Asad - father of the current leader of Syria, Bashir - took power in a military coup. The al-Asad family are Alawites, a subset of the Shiite religous faction. Bashir is continuing to bomb cities held by Sunnites, and so far the Sunnite dead from this armed-conflict are estimated at 70,000 men, women and children.
Bashir has conducted a relentless war to protect the interests of his "tribe", the Alawites. They are in a tiny region (see map here) that has a port-city, where Russia has anchored its Mediterranean Fleet. Which is the reason that Russia supports Assad, because without the port at Latakia, Russia would have no Mediterranean naval presence.
The US has never had any influence whatsoever in Syria, since the al-Asad family (originally of the Ba'athist Socialist Party) were aligned with first the Soviet Union and then with Russia. Some people think that Bashir al-Asad's wife and kids are living presently in Moscow.
Syria's oil-fields are in the east of the country, close to the Iraqi border. They are/were the principal source of income of ISIS, which took control of them 4 years ago. The only American involvement in the Syrian war are some ex-US army soldiers fighting with the Kurdish Pesh-Merga who have stopped all oil deliveries from the field (north into Turkey). They will likely also try to surround the town of Raqqa (ISIS HQ) to starve ISIS into surrender.
'Nuff said about this "war" that is more complex than a Gordian Knot ... ?
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Libya was the jewel of Africa before we destabilized it. Free housing, free energy, free university education, water in the desert, and a real success story.
Gaddafi employed his network of diplomats and recruits to assassinate dozens of his critics around the world. Amnesty International listed at least twenty-five assassinations between 1980 and 1987
"It is the Libyan people's responsibility to liquidate such scums who are distorting Libya's image abroad".
— Gaddafi talking about exiles in 1982.
In the 1990s, Gaddafi's rule was threatened by militant Islamism. In October 1993, there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Gaddafi by elements of the Libyan army. In response, Gaddafi used repressive measures, using his personal Revolutionary Guard Corps to crush riots and Islamist activism during the 1990s.
Way too reasoned, rational, and intelligent for that particular poster to grasp. I'd suggest a simple, catchy slogan that could fit on a cardboard sign. After all, it's worked for Donald 'Make America Great Again!' Trump.
Wow, what a fertile mind for PURE FICTION.
The poster you are in discussion with is essentially a one trick pony. You won't get anything else from him.
Isn't that downright strange how the truth keeps repeating itself. Those that don't seek, don't know..
They both pretend that they just innocently sit around, while sipping Coca Cola and tending their sheep, and somehow wars and mayhem take place which totally benefit both Israel and the U.S. and they claim it is by fluke. The fact that after 100 years or more of wars that the U.S. has managed to own everything in the Middle East is just God's Plan I guess.
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