So I want to talk to you today as a psychologist and psychoanalyst about an issue that I think is increasingly becoming prominent in discussions on the left within the liberal, progressive political community.
And that is the inevitability that Trump will contest any election result in which he loses.
And I want to talk about it psychologically, because I want to make the argument and explain that this isn’t something that he may do.
This isn’t something that we can sit around and hope somebody will talk some sense into him about at all, or that he might see the light and suddenly respect the will of the people.
That’s not going to happen.
And it’s not going to happen for a very particular, important psychological reason that I want to explain.
And I’m going to start by actually talking not about Trump, but about a woman I saw last week in therapy who came in because she was in trouble at work because she was contentious, combative, argumentative, pick fights.
And some of it was what looked like a kind of, I don’t know, rational response to a very patriarchal work environment.
But some of it, a lot of it had to do with her belief that if she didn’t fight, she would have to surrender and submit in a way that was humiliating and shameful to her, and that rather than experience that state of mind, she would argue and become oppositional because in those moments, she didn’t feel like she was some little helpless nothing.
And this goes to the heart of my psychological experience as a therapist because it speaks to the central universal fact of human psychology in which we will do, say, feel, act in any way we can so as to not feel certain forms of psychic pain.
Pain, painful emotions, painful situations that are distressing and dangerous.
And that’s the way the mind works.
And it does it automatically, without a lot of conscious forethought or awareness.
And one of the most effective ways I’ve seen and learned that people avoid painful, distressing, overwhelming, threatening states of mind is to emphasize their opposite.
And so I’m going to argue, and I believe that’s what Trump does.
So on the surface, his preening, boasting conceit, his self aggrandizing, domineering claims of greatness and perfection, they litter his political and business career.
And I think, you know, most of us know some of the greatest hits.
So he once said something like, oh, well, I know words.
I have the best words, whatever the hell that means, or I’m the best president for black people since Abraham Lincoln.
Hello.
Really, I’m the greatest President God ever created.
He exaggerates his wealth, his iq, his cognitive ability, his golfing ability, and actually everything he’s ever done.
He creates an imaginary world in which he is the greatest, most perfect, heroic, special man, leader and world historic figure to have ever lived.
And of course, you know, it doesn’t need to be said probably that these smug comments of his are completely wrong.
They’re incorrect, they have no basis in reality whatsoever.
But we’ve become so used to them that people who are, as followers will likely say, at their best, well, you know, that’s just Trump being Trump, and it’s just his personality.
Gotta take the good with the bad, right?
And in the progressive liberal end of the spectrum, where actually I live and belong, you know, we might feign some kind of mock eye rolling outrage and contempt for what seems to us like such clownish bragging, but we also accept it.
And I think deep down some of us have the notion that there’s a way in which Trump might be forced to or be persuaded to change.
And I’m here to tell you that’s not going to happen.
Because using the model of the mind that I just discussed, Trump is obviously, I think this is something that’s hiding in plain sight.
He is obviously working overtime all the time, every day to present himself and communicate to himself and the world that he is not a loser, that he’s not inferior, that he’s not helpless, that he’s not defective or damaged in any way.
And so this boastful, conceited, pompous, self aggrandizing stream of ridiculously exaggerated self compliments function to help him not feel these dreaded, threatening states of mind.
And that has to do with his own psychology, his background.
And to reiterate this move from feeling something painful and threatening to something that, you know, temporarily solves that problem, like boasting is something that’s automatic and it’s compulsive.
He doesn’t have a choice.
And he doesn’t have the freedom to choose to be more modest and to have more equanimity.
And he certainly does not have the freedom to modestly and generously ever, ever accept that he’s lost.
So the day after the election, if Trump loses, it’s not a danger that he will contest it and fight it, even if it means, you know, provoking and sponsoring a civil war.
It is inevitable, it is 100% certain that he will do that.
So for those of us who are politically active and want to defeat him, we have to be focused in a much more committed, laser like way in what we will do when this hurricane comes and hits us, which it will do with 100% certainty.
Now, again, I think that that is of some value in reminding our team, if you will, that it has to get, you know, ready and prepared for that fight, because that’s the fight that will happen.
The other value of it, potentially is that if I were advising the Waltz Harris campaign about their messaging, I would say, first of all, hey, this was great that you came out and called Trump and Vance weird.
The reason it was great is that that kind of sarcastic labeling of him actually got under his skin and triggered him.
And I believe and it triggered him because of what we’re talking about, that it evokes in him this fearful notion that people, the world, think of him as a loser and think of him as not normal and crazy, or which to him is just sort of like damaged defective Donald.
And I think we need to do more of that and up our game when it comes to that sort of critique and that sort of no sarcastic labeling, because it can potentially provoke him to say and do more and more crazy things and extreme things that might, in the minds of some undecided voters, lead them to be worried about him and therefore not to vote for him.
Which at the end of the day is really, I think, all that matters, isn’t it?
