To help understand

A lot of people wonder about Donald Drumpf, not just because they’re astounded that anyone would support him, but also why he does and says such bizarre things. The video above may help explain that last part.

The video is another in the TED Ed series and explains, as the title makes clear, “The psychology of narcissism”. I think that this will help anyone understand Drumpf’s behaviour, because he’s clearly a narcissist. He may even have narcissistic personality disorder, though that would require clinical evaluation to determine for certain. In any case, his version of narcissism is pretty bad, even without a formal diagnosis.

I originally saw this video probably not all that long after it was posted, and in a different context. I forgot all about it. I only re-discovered it when I saw the TED Ed video I posted last week. It was then that I realised how well it explained Drumpf—and that was even before I saw the cartoon depiction of the politician (at around 1:30).

The truth is, understanding why Drumpf does and says the things he does won’t change anything: His fans adore him and either don’t care about his narcissism, or they like things about him that come about because of it. So, this won’t help devise effective strategies for dealing with his fans, but it could help predict the sorts of things he’ll do when he faces campaign setbacks, and that could be useful in planning effective strategies.

For those of us who are merely voters, however, it will mainly help us to understand why he says and does such outrageous things as a candidate. But, it may also do one thing more: Make us more determined to keep him as far from the White House as is humanly possible, because a narcissist like him is far too dangerous to allow anywhere near the presidency.