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Hoping Trump moderates
Dear America: You just elected as president a reality TV cartoon character harboring an extreme narcissistic personality disorder (and, yes, psychologists do not usually make a diagnosis without a direct examination of the person, but I’m willing to make an exception with Donald Trump).
You traded a constitutional scholar for an intellectually incurious and lazy braggart who could not pass your eighth-grader’s civics exam.
Rather than appealing to the “our better angels” of Abraham Lincoln, Trump’s endless repetition of vitriol instead normalized vulgarity, racism, misogyny, bullying, xenophobia, sexual assault, lying, hatred and grade school name-calling, unmasking a disturbing pool of “our baser demons,” just as we pretended that these stains on our character had faded away.
Yet, as reprehensible as this pathetically insecure man is, the fact that he mirrors such dark traits within us is even more troubling.
Welcome to an “Alice in Wonderland” fact-free world. Let’s hope that, at the least, the majesty of the office moderates his thin-skinned impulsiveness. If not, I think you will regret your choice.
Steven Heaps, Ph.D.
Spokane Valley