Few media voices have arisen to question Trump's psychological make-up, which makes him unfit for the high office he now seeks. Such reluctance is understandable. Medical experts are unwilling to attribute mental conditions of individuals they have not personally examined.
David Brooks bravely puts forth his personality assessment of Trump in his New York Times column, entitled, Donald Trump's Sad, Lonely Life.
Brooks' lay diagnosis is simple: "Trump continues to display the symptoms of narcissistic alexithymia," a psychological category which may be studied on the internet, through such sources as this essay in Huffington Post.
Brooks writes:
"Politics is an effort to make human connection, but Trump seems incapable of that. He is essentially adviser-less, friendless. His campaign team is made up of cold mercenaries at best and Roger Ailes at worst. His party treats him as a stench it can't yet remove. ...
"Trump breaks his own world record for being appalling on a weekly basis, but as the campaign sinks to new low after new low, I find myself experiencing feelings of deep sadness and pity.
"Imagine if you had to go through a single day without sharing kind little moments with strangers and friends. Imagine if you had to endure a single week in a hate-filled world, crowded with enemies of your own making, the object of disgust and derision.
"You would be a twisted, tortured shrivel, too, and maybe you'd lash out and try to take cruel revenge on the universe. For Trump this is his whole life.
"Trump continues to display the symptoms of narcissistic alexithymia, [which is] the inability to understand or describe the emotions in the self. Unable to know themselves, sufferers are unable to understand, relate or attach to others.
"To prove their own existence, they hunger for endless attention from outside. Lacking internal measures of their own worth, they rely on external but insecure criteria like wealth, beauty, fame and others' submission."
Trump's supporters are likely to ignore such a description, but it is nevertheless, one way of understanding how this raging forest fire has been sweeping through our political life.
Trump has been a professional entertainer and a builder of massive structures. He had not been previously examined in the court of public opinion as a political leader or as the President of the United States.
Hillary Clinton, like candidates before her, is flawed. Her husband has been a burden to a wife with a single-minded vision. That same husband, however, served two successful terms in the White House, even as his own careless personal behavior embarrassed the nation.
Hillary Clinton is smart, determined and wise to the ways of politics. She demonstrated this in her leaked private meetings with donors.
In one private donor meeting, she spoke of two levels of political thought, the public and the private. She was referring to Steven Spielberg's film, Lincoln, with a subtle perspective any perceptive viewer could share.
In the film, Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis) is seen orchestrating passage of the 13th Amendment by working with William Seward (David Strathairn), his secretary of state, and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), the most powerful abolitionist in the House.
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