I was surprised by the many smart people that i know, who support Donald Trump to become president of the USA. How? Why? In my intellectually shocked mind. You support Trump? You? Really? This came up so often in my mind that i just needed to try and rearrange my thoughts and make some sense of it.
If i was about to buy a Tesla car, and i just saw how Elon Musk is on Donald Trump’s campaign rally, supporting him with a lot, alot, a lot of money… i’d pause my purchase, and think twice about buying, at least until after the presidential elections. I believe lots of potential buyers are like me. This is how much Elon Musk has put at stake by his Trump support, besides his own personal credibility.
I respect Mr. Jordan Peterson a lot. He aggressively campaigns for the sale of his 5 trait personality evaluation. He has even made a free, online personality evaluation of Trump, according to the model that he advertises. JP’s favorable portrayal of Trump, and his effort to defend Trump as not quite a narcissist — according to the model JP wants to sell — definitely puts a lot of doubt on the model, or at least to what JP wants to sell (based on that model). I really think of JP as — just a bit — less of an intellectual now. This is how much Jordan Peterson has placed on the table by his Trump support.
So, why do they do it?
Donald Trump, the person
Donald Trump has a history of callous, and serious mistreating of women. For instance, his own former wife accused him of raping her, before divorcing him:
Hurt obtained a copy of her sworn divorce deposition, from 1990, in which she stated that, the previous year, her husband had raped her in a fit of rage. In Hurt’s account, Trump was furious that a “scalp reduction” operation he’d undergone to eliminate a bald spot had been unexpectedly painful. Ivana had recommended the plastic surgeon. In retaliation, Hurt wrote, Trump yanked out a handful of his wife’s hair, and then forced himself on her sexually. Afterward, according to the book, she spent the night locked in a bedroom, crying; in the morning, Trump asked her, “with menacing casualness, ‘Does it hurt?’ ” Trump has denied both the rape allegation and the suggestion that he had a scalp-reduction procedure.
In June 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll alleged in New York magazine that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996. Two friends of Carroll stated that Carroll had previously confided in them about the incident. Trump called the allegation fiction and denied ever meeting Carroll, despite a photo of them together from 1987 being published by the magazine.[13][14][15] In November 2022, Carroll filed a suit against Trump for battery under the Adult Survivors Act. On May 9, 2023, a New York jury in a civil case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll, but found him not liable for rape. They awarded Carroll US$5 million in damages.
There are a lot of other extremely serious sexual misconduct charges and allegations that you can search through, not just the two presented in the above quotes.
Then, considering media, one of the bases of US democracy…
Trump has repeatedly issued specific threats to weaponize the U.S. government against the media when he is displeased with their coverage. He has made at least 15 calls for television stations to have their broadcast licenses revoked–a power the president does not possess.
— USA: Trump verbally attacked the media more than 100 times in run-up to election
There’s a lot to a person by what s/he wants to do, but stopped, because those efforts may continue and at least some of it will spill into other areas. A criminally-oriented mind will do damage, eventually, somewhere…
Trump’s extremely arrogant way of dealing with media, and everyone else that hints at his reputation is famous and needs no more space here (or anywhere). Nor his vague, superficial lies about lots of topics, like…
TRUMP: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
TRUMP: “I had no inflation, virtually no inflation. They had the highest inflation, perhaps in the history of our country, because I’ve never seen a worse period of time. People can’t go out and buy cereal or bacon or eggs or anything else.”
— NPR fact-checked the Harris-Trump presidential debate. Here’s what we found
Considering the USA economy during Trump’s presidency, it was about the same as most of the previous presidents terms, nothing special (besides his disastrous Covid-19 response).
Considering his business practices, a lot can be searched through, but this is one example:
In May 2024, a jury in New York found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in an attempt to influence the 2016 election, making him the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime.
Then, historically, Trump has been ranked among the worst USA presidents.
There’s a lot more to search about Trump, a lot of shocking things…
I am far from an authority on psychology, but according to my personal view on Trump’s behavior in the last several years, he seems to definitely have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as defined by psychology. So, Jordan Peterson’s character evaluation model has lost all value in my mind. I’m never paying for it. Ever.
Conservatives supporting the personification of anticonservativism?
How did it happen that conservative, family-centered, business-centered, law-centered people are supporting a person who is the personification of a cheater and a crook with blatant disregard of law or modest behavior, to say the least? A narcissistic-leaning one (at least)?
How did it happen that a whole political party, Trump’s own political party, hundreds of years of existence to it, has allowed for such a character to become her leader? The people inside it should start to think really, really hard how to reorganize it, so that only decent people are able to rise to the top in the future; the party would be stronger because of it, and the country, too.
What is Donald Trump’s political asset?
What does Trump offer his supporters, more valuable than his aggressiveness, illegalities, and threats?
I will list some of my personal efforts to answer this question for most of his voters, those that don’t have a direct material gain; they would have intellectual, or emotional gains:
- First, not knowing what kind of person Donald Trump is in reality, or not caring about it;
- Political party history for his voters (so they don’t care about anything else but to stay true to the party they’ve been supporting for years);
- Hatred against the other party;
- Fear of what the other party may do.
What is the perceived threat by his political opponent (Kamala), that Trump’s new presidency is expected to remove for his supporters? Trump’s opponents should make serious efforts to understand this.
Especially interesting for me is that this seemingly contradictory behavior by lots of political party voters seems to be the standard everywhere, in all democratic countries. This needs a lot more thinking, since political leaders have enormous effect on each country, and the world as a whole.
Trump’s supporters should think about the possibility that Trump undermines them, as intellectuals, and USA as a country, so his supporters may end up not to have a country, at all. Secessionist movements are not too hard to instigate when the general political conditions are ripe, not even in the USA. What happens with the rest of the world afterwards…
The cover picture is from here.
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