Are you as tired of him as I am?

You'll never guess who I'm talking about

Getty Photo Credit: Tasos Katopodis. Commentary added.

I am tired of his face. I am tired of his style of speech. I am so tired of his lies. I am tired of his bluster, his narcissism. I am tired of his fraud and his crimes. I am tired of the relentless news coverage and the danger he poses to democracy. 

I am so tired.

His face

Or, more specifically, his facial expressions. Let’s start with the pout. It’s his way of trying to look tough, but he can’t pull it off because he isn’t tough. If we’ve learned nothing else in the last eight years, it’s that he’s a perpetually aggrieved child who can never find satisfaction and who blames everything bad that happens to him on everyone else.

Then there’s the sneer, which is worse. He saves it for those occasions when he scores a point against a perceived enemy — like getting the Mike Johnsons and Ron DeSantises of the world to come to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his ring, or on those alarming occasions when he gets away with breaking a norm (or a law) or, maybe even worse, when he gets an assist from an increasingly corrupt institution like the Supreme Court.

Together, the pout and the sneer perfectly encapsulate the tension that exists between his arrogant belief that he is utterly untouchable and his desperately fragile ego and unconscious sense that he is a weak, terrified little boy.

The way he talks

He just won’t stop talking. And the longer he speaks, the more he lapses into a stream of consciousness that defies logic or meaning. There is no nuance, no attempt to be coherent, no aspiration to eloquence. 

1. Word Choice: Everything is always terrible or incredible. It is always like nothing you’ve ever seen. There are no shades of gray; only the black and white of hyperbole, because if it is in any way related to him or his enemies, it must be the best or the worst.

2. Asides and Non Sequiturs: He meanders without ever really getting to the point, and along the way he veers off onto a totally unrelated topic. He could be talking about nuclear weapons and then launch into a monologue about water pressure or lightbulbs while his supporters wait for a conclusion he never draws.

3. Repetition: When he wants to drive home a point, he doesn’t just repeat it once, he repeats it incessantly. He pounds it down. Repetition reinforces his message, even as it hides the lack of substance and factual information — and his brand of simple-minded patter makes it all the more effective. As Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda for Nazi Germany put it, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” In cognitive psychology, this is known as the “illusory truth effect.” 

4. Rhetoric: He speaks down to the lowest common denominator and doesn’t hesitate to call on his followers to commit violence on his behalf, riling them up with promises to pay their lawyers or otherwise offering them immunity. It is the coward’s way, but he excels at it.

And here lies his disturbing resemblance to cult leaders. They, too, traffic in simplistic tropes and make vague promises; they see themselves as unique, chosen, and, in some cases, divine; they create a clear division between their group (the “chosen” ones) and the out group (the “enemy” or “other”). Cult leaders dehumanize the other, portraying them as inferior or inhuman (“vermin”). 

Sound familiar?

When you hear that voice, rambling, repetitive, and threatening, remember: it’s not empty noise — he’s preying on the vulnerability of his followers, who at this point seem almost incapable of listening to any voice but his.

His lies

Truth was not a particularly valued commodity but this man takes lying to a whole new level. He tells lies — about the weather, about crowd sizes — that are easily disproved. He lies to his followers and to himself about himself — his wealth, his business, his record.

The truly baffling part is that many people believe him. And for every person that believes him, there are 10 who know he’s lying, but don’t care.

Narrative Necessity and Solipsistic Reality:

Does he believe his own lies? Fellow psychologist Robert Jay Lifton suggests that his belief is not always definite and fixed but has become a part of his narrative necessity. He partially believes in this falsehood while consciously manipulating it to manipulate the American public. His self-centered reality allows him to keep the belief active despite external challenges.

I think it depends to a great degree on whether or not the lie he is telling relates to him personally. In other words, if he’s lying about his net worth or his criminality or poll numbers he must out of necessity believe them — they are a defense mechanism against his own extraordinary insecurity. The alternative would be to acknowledge that he is actually a loser, and that would be intolerable for him.

His bluster

He interrupts, he talks over people, he fails to treat others with the same courtesy he demands. 

His rudeness and lack of manners exists because he believes basic human decency is for suckers and weaklings.

He’s truly the worst person in any room. 

The bluster is particularly hard to take knowing it is based on nothing. He may like to pretend that he’s a brilliant real estate tycoon, but this is a completely illusory image that was created decades ago by his father, propped up on a scaffolding of bank loans and lies. 

And that was not all. His father was willing to stake millions of dollars on his son because he believed he could leverage the skills his son did have – as a savant of self-promotion, shameless liar, marketer, and builder of brands – to achieve the one thing that had always eluded him: a level of fame that matched his ego and satisfied his ambition in a way money alone never could.

Unfortunately, too many people since have found this bluster (clownish as it may be to most of us) useful, including Mark Burnett, who made the tragic decision to center the “Celebrity Apprentice” on a failed businessman who otherwise would have faded into obscurity. 

The strut is part of the deception, the art of distraction, based on smoke and mirrors. It says look here, focus on the spectacle and not the man behind the curtain.

His narcissism

His narcissism knows no bounds. He gazes into the mirror, sees a god, and expects us all to bow down. His ego is like a black hole, sucking in praise, adoration, and any semblance of humility. He surrounds himself with sycophants, those who nod and clap like trained seals. 

His self-love is a theatrical spectacle, a masquerade of grandeur. He revels in the spotlight, basking in the adoration of crowds.

Yet, this dance is a diversion — a sad waltz to distract from the void within. His mirror reflects an image he desperately wants to believe: the infallible titan, impervious to doubt.

But beneath the bravado lies a wounded child — the boy who yearned for approval, who hungered for his father’s love but never got it. His narcissism is a bandage, covering old scars.

His insecurity whispers: “You’re not enough. You’ll never be.”

And he’s right.

His fraud and crimes

I’ve lost count of how many times he’s gotten away with the lies and fraud and alleged criminality and simply being a horrible human being. He’s a charlatan with nothing but snake oil to sell. His promises are empty, because he has nothing of substance to offer.

And his antisocial behavior is directly tied to his psychopathology — because he believes himself to be above the law and cannot fathom that he would ever be held to the same standard as us mere mortals.

The fraudulent financial statements he used to secure loans and build his real estate empire concealed the dark truth that his wealth was a mirage.

The 34 felony charges relate to his falsifying business records as a result of payments to suppress an embarrassing fling with a porn actor from voters at a crucial point before the 2016 election.

His inability to concede loss after the 2020 election — indeed, his inability to believe that he could lose at all — was behind the buildup to the January 6th insurrection, the calls to the Georgia attorney general to “find” votes in order to change that state’s results, and the fake elector scheme in multiple states, including Michigan and Arizona.

His theft of government documents reflects his continuing attempt to assert his sense of impunity, which, in all but one of his criminal cases, remains unchallenged.

The relentless news coverage

The way that every social media post, every utterance, every nap becomes breaking news reminds us on the one hand that he is wholly unfit and that the corporate media — even after seven years of this nightmare — remains incapable of covering him.

Instead of framing stories about him in a way that educates American voters about his unfitness and the depths of his depravity, the media engage in bothsidesism. Thanks to the cravenness of the Republican Party, which has chosen, for the third time, to make him their presidential nominee, he remains frighteningly relevant in our politics — but the media’s unceasing attempts to normalize him as a candidate demonstrate that they’ve learned nothing or that they have come to the cynical conclusion that they need him as much as he needs them.

The threat to democracy

He doesn’t simply flirt with authoritarianism — and authoritarians — he aspires to be one. His Big Lie, that the 2020 election was somehow illegitimate, and his false claims of election fraud continue to have an impact, sowing distrust in the inviolability of the electoral process, which is the foundation of our democracy. 

We stand at a crossroads. His potential return to power in 2024 forces us to confront a fundamental question: Can democracy withstand another assault?

Our collective response will shape the course of history.

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