I’ve been trying to figure out where Trump’s contempt for the military comes from. It’s something we’ve known about for a long time, dating back to when he denigrated John McCain during his first campaign for president. He denounced McCain’s service in July of 2015, just a month after his famous trip down the golden escalator to announce he was running. At something called the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump was asked a question about Senator John McCain, with whom he had been having something of a political feud.
Excellent piece. I will add that I don't think Trump is jealous. I think he's quite pleased that he got out of serving. Trump's issue is that he is a coward. That is not something he can admit to himself. Therefore, he projects his cowardice and shame onto heroes...in an attempt to make them look small.
Trump was brought up by his father to think it is stupid to risk your life in the military. His father was adamantly opposed to his older brother Fred going being involved in ROTC then entering the Air National Guard as a Second Lieutenant. Trump’s grandfather Frederick came to the US to avoid military service in Germany. When Frederick went back to Germany to find a wife he was stripped of his citizenship for evading the draft. Yes Trump’s parents sent him to a military academy but that was out of desperation because they couldn’t control him, not because they wanted him to have a military career. Disdain for the military has a long tradition in the Trump family.
Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism, brings up Fred's disdain for the military too in her piece on why Trump behaved the way he did in the ANC. She is not talking about jealousy as a reason though, but his signaling to people like Putin his shared disrespect of our military. https://lucid.substack.com/p/the-real-reason-donald-trump-insults
However, I read a Substack discussion the other day, that showed a series of Donald Trump photo ops and in all he had exactly the same pose, so that author was positing that it is his signature pose, and it makes no difference where he goes. That is what he will do.
Bullies are cowards. They project their fears. Do not accept them. Great writing Luc - read it first in the can at midnight. This is my awake response.
Sorry, I don’t agree. He is INSANELY jealous of anyone who acted nobly or heroically (as McCain did), particularly if the person gains and holds public acclaim.
I agree that he's jealous, but only of the acclaim -- never of the way it was earned. He's never acted, or even pretended to act, with anything like nobility or courage.
He is INSANELY jealous, but he doesn't know he is, because he is too weak to acknowledge that he is anything but a stable genius. Therefore, I think that your view that he is jealous is consistent with the first post in this thread, which says that he is not jealous. Read that first post to mean "not consciously jealous." He lacks self-knowledge to a greater degree than anyone of whom I've ever known.
An intelligent, secure person would admit his own jealousy. He feels it, I think, as a deep, gnawing resentment and he therefore invents laughably transparent reasons why the object of his jealousy is unworthy. Certainly Trump has not a grain of insight, that kindly but critical self-assessment that intelligent adults try to foster in themselves to better deal with the world. I think his “stable genius” talk is built on a house of cards, and I think he knows it is nonsense and he mouths crap like that for the benefit of his lobotomized minions, and I think at base level he is a man filled with terror and a vague but persistent sense of his inadequacy and pending doom.
I doubt that he knows his "stable genius" talk is nonsense, except at an unconscious level. He couldn't admit to himself that it is. Consider this recent response to the charge that he babbles at his rallies:
“You know, I do the weave,” Trump recently said at a political event. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
I'm not stupid. I'm brilliant, the most brilliant person in the history of the world - all of you are just too stupid to understand my brilliant weave.
Trump is a veritable catalogue of all the repugnant traits in a single human being. He is a maldeveloped, very damaged emotional baby and is insanely jealous of anyone who has actually acted nobly or heroically. He darkly and grudgingly recognizes such people, but as a malignant narcissist he wants the spotlight always on himself. My main comment— all educated guesses by a layman— elaborates further.
Agree. Brilliant analysis. Never would have occurred to me. I paused before Lucian revealed his take and tried to think of my own answer. It was different. I thought of Roy Cohn and all the tragic gay men like him who stay deep in their closet but must do more than hide. They persecute other gays with a vengeance. Its denial on steroids. This hatred, self hatred at the bottom is expressed for reasons you and others touch on. Again, projection.
It's not just jealousy. To Trump, all relationships are transactional. They exist only because the parties get something tangible from them. He can't understand how a person could serve without receiving something tangible from the service itself. (Obviously there are numerous benefits to the servicemen and women, but these are intangibles, and therefore not in the Trump universe.)
This reminds me of an interview with Melania Trump I once read where she was asked if she would have married Trump if he wasn't rich. Her answer was "Do you think he would have married me if I wasn't beautiful?" And there you have it: the perfect transactional relationship. Unfortunately, the relationship between service and Trump doesn't follow the pattern.
Jealous and envious. I would also say he is deeply insecure. There is never enough because he is nothing without all the trappings. He is a classic narcissist. Evil, mean, uncaring, lacking in empathy, etc. Cannot tolerate disabled or "losers" or anyone "imperfect" because their imperfection might be associated with and reflected upon him So, so sick.
There you have it: Trump is an archtype malignant narcissist, a very dangerous personality type. They are responsible for a lot of our social ills. Just look at Trump's record as our President: Ordering protestors to go attack the Capitol? Really? I suspect that Hitler was a malignant narcissist too. A good read to better understand and avoid these personality types is psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie . . . "
I never had the opportunity to deploy. I am still proud that I was willing to put my name on the list because I believed that serving our country was important.
I still believe that service to others is at the core of a healthy society.
Trump’s relationship with everyone is transactional. You don’t do something unless there’s something in return. His father was very much the same. And if you weren’t like that, you received his (and his father’s) scorn. Trump’s older brother wasn’t like their father. He had a very kind nature, which drew complete contempt from their father and his brother. And he died early and unhappy.
Trump took an oath or protect and serve the Constitution, but for him that only meant what profit the country could give him. It’s always “what do I get out of it” rather than “what am I able to do for you.” And it will always be that way. To Trump service means being served, not the other way around.
I beg readers of this to get a copy of the film of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” with Bette Davis. The Hubbards were exactly the same as the Trumps: money grubbing, amoral, self-centered, and completely intolerant of anybody with a kind heart. Kindness is a sign of weakness to these people. They have no qualms of throwing you under the bus if that’s what it takes to get what they want.
What it takes is strong moral fiber to stand up to these people. They need to be crushed.
Arrogance, manipulation, and a lack of empathy. Sounds very similar to the behaviors of a South African guy who controls X, Starlink, SpaceX, Tesla, and the Boring Corp. Birds of a feather...
Donald was not born into a household devoted to service to the United States.
His grandfather was a draft dodger from Germany, who made his fortune in hotels and brothels during the gold mining era in California & Alaska. He returned to set up a similar operation in New York, which he passed on to his son; who turned out to a sympathiser for the Third Reich.
My grandfather, a WW1 Captain of Field Artillery, went to a high school Military Academy. In the 1930's he sent his three sons to one, too. He wanted me to go where my uncles had gone, but by the late 1950's they were ALL just reform schools for wayward rich boys. Thank goodness, my father would not allow me to go to it.
Postscript: My grandfather was a Scot born in Canada. I have no idea why he went to the Danville Military Academy in Virginia, but, coming from Canada, it must have been like living on another planet. He never spoke about it.
I have said this before in this forum, but my husband of nearly 54 years, took his oath of service upon receiving his Lieutenant’s bars on graduation day. As an officer at a nuclear missile sight in our FIRST year of marriage, was a classified assignment. He died never divulging the number of missiles that he had in his charge. His service, no matter if only for 5 years, and thank God, returning from Vietnam hale and hearty, was true and complete. He understood what an “oath” meant.
The mistake is to consider him as a human with all the intelligence and emotions of a fully formed human. There are parts missing. Nature vs. nurture? Short end of both sticks.
He is a classic textbook example of a narcissist at the very top of that personality scale!
All he values is himself, adulation from others particular despots who rule by intimidation, money and power. Remember his first book, “Winning By Intimidation “? That shows us who he is and how he leads.
Years ago, Donald Jr told his mother and his father he was thinking of joining the military. They both said they would disinherit him. Why? Because being in the military would not allow him to serve the god Mammon.
I agree that the guy has no concept of serving something larger than himself, which of course describes serving in the military, but his resentment seems like a linear progression from his youth: his parents packed him off to New York Military Academy at thirteen, and by the time he became an upperclassman, he was by all accounts an abusive bully (the culture at NYMA encouraged this). In other words, the lessons he learned from military school had nothing to do with duty, and everything to do with the transactional - you give me something, like total abasement, to keep me from beating the shit out of you - and these are the lessons he's carried through life. I think he scorns people who respect that something larger as suckers because his worldview doesn't admit of it, in principle, and those people must be either hypocrites or patsies. Now, we might also suspect he's compensating for some deeper inadequacy, but I don't have the stomach to plumb those depths.
Excellent piece. I will add that I don't think Trump is jealous. I think he's quite pleased that he got out of serving. Trump's issue is that he is a coward. That is not something he can admit to himself. Therefore, he projects his cowardice and shame onto heroes...in an attempt to make them look small.
I agree. Most bullies are cowards at heart and he's always been a bully. And we know that most things he says are projection.
Trump was brought up by his father to think it is stupid to risk your life in the military. His father was adamantly opposed to his older brother Fred going being involved in ROTC then entering the Air National Guard as a Second Lieutenant. Trump’s grandfather Frederick came to the US to avoid military service in Germany. When Frederick went back to Germany to find a wife he was stripped of his citizenship for evading the draft. Yes Trump’s parents sent him to a military academy but that was out of desperation because they couldn’t control him, not because they wanted him to have a military career. Disdain for the military has a long tradition in the Trump family.
Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism, brings up Fred's disdain for the military too in her piece on why Trump behaved the way he did in the ANC. She is not talking about jealousy as a reason though, but his signaling to people like Putin his shared disrespect of our military. https://lucid.substack.com/p/the-real-reason-donald-trump-insults
However, I read a Substack discussion the other day, that showed a series of Donald Trump photo ops and in all he had exactly the same pose, so that author was positing that it is his signature pose, and it makes no difference where he goes. That is what he will do.
A coward indeed: Fearful. Gerald Jampolsky wrote a book that really helped me understand how guilt, blame, envy - and jealousy - are manifestations of fear, and how to deal with them: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Letting-Fear-Gerald-Jampolsky/dp/1587611961
Bullies are cowards. They project their fears. Do not accept them. Great writing Luc - read it first in the can at midnight. This is my awake response.
Sorry, I don’t agree. He is INSANELY jealous of anyone who acted nobly or heroically (as McCain did), particularly if the person gains and holds public acclaim.
I agree that he's jealous, but only of the acclaim -- never of the way it was earned. He's never acted, or even pretended to act, with anything like nobility or courage.
Agree 100%. My (rather long) main comment touches on this point.
He is INSANELY jealous, but he doesn't know he is, because he is too weak to acknowledge that he is anything but a stable genius. Therefore, I think that your view that he is jealous is consistent with the first post in this thread, which says that he is not jealous. Read that first post to mean "not consciously jealous." He lacks self-knowledge to a greater degree than anyone of whom I've ever known.
An intelligent, secure person would admit his own jealousy. He feels it, I think, as a deep, gnawing resentment and he therefore invents laughably transparent reasons why the object of his jealousy is unworthy. Certainly Trump has not a grain of insight, that kindly but critical self-assessment that intelligent adults try to foster in themselves to better deal with the world. I think his “stable genius” talk is built on a house of cards, and I think he knows it is nonsense and he mouths crap like that for the benefit of his lobotomized minions, and I think at base level he is a man filled with terror and a vague but persistent sense of his inadequacy and pending doom.
I doubt that he knows his "stable genius" talk is nonsense, except at an unconscious level. He couldn't admit to himself that it is. Consider this recent response to the charge that he babbles at his rallies:
“You know, I do the weave,” Trump recently said at a political event. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
I'm not stupid. I'm brilliant, the most brilliant person in the history of the world - all of you are just too stupid to understand my brilliant weave.
I guess we could debate this forever. Who knows what’s inside that head of his?
Trump is a veritable catalogue of all the repugnant traits in a single human being. He is a maldeveloped, very damaged emotional baby and is insanely jealous of anyone who has actually acted nobly or heroically. He darkly and grudgingly recognizes such people, but as a malignant narcissist he wants the spotlight always on himself. My main comment— all educated guesses by a layman— elaborates further.
Thank you for your unwavering commitment to writing on the subject of Trump -- you must have titanium guts.
Sometimes, I just want to bake two dozen cookies and leave them on your doorstep.
Agree. Brilliant analysis. Never would have occurred to me. I paused before Lucian revealed his take and tried to think of my own answer. It was different. I thought of Roy Cohn and all the tragic gay men like him who stay deep in their closet but must do more than hide. They persecute other gays with a vengeance. Its denial on steroids. This hatred, self hatred at the bottom is expressed for reasons you and others touch on. Again, projection.
It's not just jealousy. To Trump, all relationships are transactional. They exist only because the parties get something tangible from them. He can't understand how a person could serve without receiving something tangible from the service itself. (Obviously there are numerous benefits to the servicemen and women, but these are intangibles, and therefore not in the Trump universe.)
This reminds me of an interview with Melania Trump I once read where she was asked if she would have married Trump if he wasn't rich. Her answer was "Do you think he would have married me if I wasn't beautiful?" And there you have it: the perfect transactional relationship. Unfortunately, the relationship between service and Trump doesn't follow the pattern.
Jealous and envious. I would also say he is deeply insecure. There is never enough because he is nothing without all the trappings. He is a classic narcissist. Evil, mean, uncaring, lacking in empathy, etc. Cannot tolerate disabled or "losers" or anyone "imperfect" because their imperfection might be associated with and reflected upon him So, so sick.
There you have it: Trump is an archtype malignant narcissist, a very dangerous personality type. They are responsible for a lot of our social ills. Just look at Trump's record as our President: Ordering protestors to go attack the Capitol? Really? I suspect that Hitler was a malignant narcissist too. A good read to better understand and avoid these personality types is psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie . . . "
I’ve read it. Big fan of MS Peck. And the comparisons to Hitler, while old and worn, are as true as ever.
I never had the opportunity to deploy. I am still proud that I was willing to put my name on the list because I believed that serving our country was important.
I still believe that service to others is at the core of a healthy society.
Trump’s relationship with everyone is transactional. You don’t do something unless there’s something in return. His father was very much the same. And if you weren’t like that, you received his (and his father’s) scorn. Trump’s older brother wasn’t like their father. He had a very kind nature, which drew complete contempt from their father and his brother. And he died early and unhappy.
Trump took an oath or protect and serve the Constitution, but for him that only meant what profit the country could give him. It’s always “what do I get out of it” rather than “what am I able to do for you.” And it will always be that way. To Trump service means being served, not the other way around.
I beg readers of this to get a copy of the film of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” with Bette Davis. The Hubbards were exactly the same as the Trumps: money grubbing, amoral, self-centered, and completely intolerant of anybody with a kind heart. Kindness is a sign of weakness to these people. They have no qualms of throwing you under the bus if that’s what it takes to get what they want.
What it takes is strong moral fiber to stand up to these people. They need to be crushed.
Nice to read remarks from someone who draws upon great plays and movies for analysis of present-day situation.
Ta! I'm putting this on my Amazon Prime watch list -- one of the classics I've not seen before, altho' heard about.
Arrogance, manipulation, and a lack of empathy. Sounds very similar to the behaviors of a South African guy who controls X, Starlink, SpaceX, Tesla, and the Boring Corp. Birds of a feather...
Very well stated.
A profoundly moving analysis. Going far into and beyond that glutinous worm running for president to avoid prison.
I believe you may very well have found the « thing » that leads him to despise soldiers, and
I’m in no way denigrating some very good and great men who have not been soldiers, and never wanted to be. Great respect, everyone of them.
Donald was not born into a household devoted to service to the United States.
His grandfather was a draft dodger from Germany, who made his fortune in hotels and brothels during the gold mining era in California & Alaska. He returned to set up a similar operation in New York, which he passed on to his son; who turned out to a sympathiser for the Third Reich.
The rest is social studies.
Yes!
I wonder if part of his contempt stems from having been sent to military school because of his uncontrollable and vicious behavior when he was young.
My grandfather, a WW1 Captain of Field Artillery, went to a high school Military Academy. In the 1930's he sent his three sons to one, too. He wanted me to go where my uncles had gone, but by the late 1950's they were ALL just reform schools for wayward rich boys. Thank goodness, my father would not allow me to go to it.
Postscript: My grandfather was a Scot born in Canada. I have no idea why he went to the Danville Military Academy in Virginia, but, coming from Canada, it must have been like living on another planet. He never spoke about it.
I have said this before in this forum, but my husband of nearly 54 years, took his oath of service upon receiving his Lieutenant’s bars on graduation day. As an officer at a nuclear missile sight in our FIRST year of marriage, was a classified assignment. He died never divulging the number of missiles that he had in his charge. His service, no matter if only for 5 years, and thank God, returning from Vietnam hale and hearty, was true and complete. He understood what an “oath” meant.
I am sorry for the loss of your beloved husband. What an honorable man!
He truly was. Thank you.
The mistake is to consider him as a human with all the intelligence and emotions of a fully formed human. There are parts missing. Nature vs. nurture? Short end of both sticks.
Killed it, again, Lucian. There’s no one better these days on duty, honor, country, service, than you.
To think we have come to this…an empty shell with no redeeming qualities would be our President…again.
Oh please do not use the emphatic “would” I immediately felt ill.
Your best writing on Trump yet, and that’s saying something.
Lucian, you give Trump too much credit.
He is a classic textbook example of a narcissist at the very top of that personality scale!
All he values is himself, adulation from others particular despots who rule by intimidation, money and power. Remember his first book, “Winning By Intimidation “? That shows us who he is and how he leads.
Years ago, Donald Jr told his mother and his father he was thinking of joining the military. They both said they would disinherit him. Why? Because being in the military would not allow him to serve the god Mammon.
He is a sick man who is getting sicker!
What I tried to explore was the why, not the what reflected by a diagnosis like narcissist.
I agree that the guy has no concept of serving something larger than himself, which of course describes serving in the military, but his resentment seems like a linear progression from his youth: his parents packed him off to New York Military Academy at thirteen, and by the time he became an upperclassman, he was by all accounts an abusive bully (the culture at NYMA encouraged this). In other words, the lessons he learned from military school had nothing to do with duty, and everything to do with the transactional - you give me something, like total abasement, to keep me from beating the shit out of you - and these are the lessons he's carried through life. I think he scorns people who respect that something larger as suckers because his worldview doesn't admit of it, in principle, and those people must be either hypocrites or patsies. Now, we might also suspect he's compensating for some deeper inadequacy, but I don't have the stomach to plumb those depths.