Donald Trump picked cabinet nominees that horrified American voters, including his supporters. It’s not that he put his needs above the voters’. It’s that he’s emotionally incapable of appreciating the voters’ concerns, so he can’t consider or care about them.
A condition referred to as sociopathy, might help us understand why. It refers to people who lack a conscience, are incapable of experiencing guilt, shame, remorse, or empathy. It seems that Trump checks all the boxes. So he’s unencumbered by the concerns of others, free to disrespect soldiers who were captured or lost their lives defending their country, can comfortably tether to White Supremacists, threaten Senate Republicans with primary challenges if they don’t confirm his pernicious cabinet picks, all of this without a spec of guilt, shame, regret or remorse. Moreover, the absence of conscience provides license to define his own reality, declare victory in any competition he lost, and claim superior expertise on subjects about which he knows almost nothing (“I know more than the generals). Sound familiar?
So Trump picked:
- a Secretary of Health who falsifies the side effects of vaccines and considers ending their use and whose lawyer petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, that protected millions from a virus that paralyzes and kills;
- an alcoholic Fox co-host and sex offender as Defense Secretary who threatens to unleash the military on Trump’s enemies, and who wouldn’t discourage Trump’s impulsive use of nuclear weapons, as he attempted in the last month of his presidency when it took his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milly, to stop him.
- a Director of National Intelligence to oversee all America’s intelligence agencies, who parroted false Russian propaganda .and posted a video repeating Russia’s false claim that the US was funding biological weapons labs in Ukraine.
- an Attorney General who pledged to prosecute the prosecutors who indicted Trump; and
- an FBI Director whose wants to put Joe Biden and other members of his administration in jail and will sign off on any campaign of retribution, including the press. Patel pledged, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections.:
Psychologists estimate that only four percent of the population suffer from sociopathy. But they’re invisible because how they tick is alien to the rest of the population and, therefore, unknowable.
Sociopaths dream of dominating their society because it satisfies their need for of power and control. Sadly, in a psychologically ignorant society, their dreams can become a reality for them and a nightmare for others. It’s not surprising therefore that Trump, callous to Americans’ health needs, abandoned its seven decades of leading the global fight against pandemics, and suffered the worst record against Covid of any country, having had 4.2 percent of the world’s population, 30 percent of COVID-19 cases and 19 percent of COVID deaths — more than any other country including China, whose population is more than four times larger than ours.
A Washing Post reporter asked Trump, “What do you say to millions of Americans who are scared of Covid? They see so many deaths, 14,000 who are sick. What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now, who are scared?
Trump answered: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter. I think it’s a very nasty question, and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people. … you’re doing sensationalism, and the same with NBC and Concast…”
I rest my case.
