Donald Trump, Poster Child for Megalomania

Megalomaniac: Someone with an extreme obsession for power, wealth, and self-importance, characterized by grandiose delusions of being more significant or powerful than they are, often linked to a tenuous grip on reality.”

“The whole aim  of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”  H.L. Mencken, “Baltimore Evening Sun,”1920.

The mainstream media continues to describe Donald Trump as an “isolationist,” or a “neo-conservative,” or more recently as an “imperialist.”  These terms are irrelevant; the term that should be applied is “megalomaniac” or “narcissist.”  These terms fit Trump and help to understand the threat he poses to the peace and security of the United States and much of the global community.

Trump’s narcissism has been on display for decades.  It is a serious personality disorder that is difficult to treat.  According to one prominent psychiatrist, Alexa Albert, narcissism is shaped by “early experiences of emotional neglect,” which were described in the book by Trump’s niece, Mary Trump (“Too Much—and Never Enough”) that was published six years ago.  According to Albert, such a personal history can leave a person “deeply shamed and dependent on external affirmation, intoxicated by praise and hypersensitive to criticism.”

In the past year, Trump has used military force in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, West Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Caribbean, South America,and the eastern Pacific.  He has threatened attacks on Colombia, Denmark, Cuba, and even Canada.  The current threats against Denmark and Greenland are a threat to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, probably the most successful alliance in the modern era, the Atlantic Alliance, and all of East and West Europe.

At home, he has unleashed the agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the people of Minnesota, and he is now threatening to use the centuries-old Insurrection Act to deploy U.S. troops in Minnesota.  This would be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which was designed to limit the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic law.

In addition to the use of military power, Trump has attacked virtually every U.S. institution that has contributed to U.S. excellence, including educational, legal, medical, media, and research institutions.  These attacks are very reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s first year in power, when he attacked similarl institutions in order to weaken and ultimately destroy Germany’s democracy.

Trump’s attacks on the institutions of law and accountability have already seriously weakened America’s democracy.  Senator Chris Murphy (D/CT) and others believe that the chances are only 50-50 that we can maintain our democracy until the mid-term elections later this year.  And then there are those  who don’t believe that there will be mid-term elections.

The dangerous performance of Trump in his second term is matched by the stunning fact that he received nearly 77 million votes in 2024, which was more than his popular vote in 2016 (nearly 63 million ) and 2020 (73 million).  Trump’s narcissism should have deterred voters, but large numbers of people with less education increasingly were attracted to him.  This may explain why Trump moved so quickly last year to attack elite educational institutions as well as Blue States with higher levels of education.  It turns out that personality disorders are no liability for the U.S. electorate.

Again, H.L. Mencken is helpful: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner sole of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”  Well, here we are!

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