"Things gained through unjust fraud are never secure." – Sophocles

Well, we're headed into another war, thanks to the Idiot-in-Chief. It's a topic for another post. Just one note about it, and then on to my regularly scheduled topic.



Senator Murphy wrote, "I hope I am wrong, but I suspect this White House is totally unprepared for the cascade of consequences that will follow last night’s actions."

You're not wrong, Senator. He had not thought of consequences because he does not think about consequences. He has never had consequences for his actions.

He needs consequences – lots of them – meted out hard.


**********


"Things gained through unjust fraud are never secure." – Sophocles

This blog post was going to be about Don the Con and his confidence game. But it quickly went down a very dark path.

He's a con artist extraordinaire. But not only is he a con man, he's a cult leader and an abuser. All his dark traits combine to form a dangerous concoction. There's more to Trump than just the psychology of the con man, as we'll see.

Paul Szep

The Con. Remember my recent post about his body language? Nearly all of his non-verbals are meant to broadcast confidence. In fact, con man is short for confidence man. A confidence man's greatest tool is that very confidence, which causes his marks to let down their defenses and trust him enough to buy what he's selling. A con man doesn't steal. A con man convinces you to willingly give him things.

Lots of people liken TЯUMP to a con man. Former Fox News reporter “Campaign Carl” Cameron, CNN commentator Don Lemon, 45's former personal attorney and current federal prison inmate Michael Cohen, former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, and others all have called him a con man.

And how does he do it? In short, he lies.

But his brazenness is also a big part of it. He is using the psychology of openness vs. secrecy to coerce his followers into thinking he is doing nothing wrong. There's a psychological shortcut we tend to use called "The Secrecy Heuristic." If something is deemed secret, it is considered to be more valuable. The researchers who named this psychological fallacy looked at it in a situation involving foreign policy. The subjects in the study judged information as more valuable when it was described as "classified" rather than "public." By extension, if someone asks Ukraine or China right out in the open to investigate his political rivals, or proclaim aloud that they can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it, well, that's nothing to worry about, right? If it was really bad, he'd want to keep it secret, wouldn't he?


The tactics of a con man.

Appropriately-named Maria Konnikova is an expert in the con. She's a Columbia- and Harvard-educated psychologist and author of a book entitled "The Confidence Game." Let her explain a little about Con-Man-in-Chief.

This is old (2016), but relevant. Note: I'm not a fan of Bill Maher, and I don't like the way he interrupts her, but Konnikova makes excellent points in this interview.




The "Dark Triad."

Ms. Konnikova's remarks on the "Dark Triad" of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism started me down a different path. Maybe 45's con man days were at their pinnacle when he conned New York City, charitable givers, college students, his investors, and the IRS.

I believe now we've moved far beyond a simple con.

The Dark Triad is "defined as a set of traits that include the tendency to seek admiration and special treatment (otherwise known as narcissism), to be callous and insensitive (psychopathy) and to manipulate others (Machiavellianism)." Sound familiar?

The traits of Machiavellianism:

• Only focused on their own ambition and interests
• Prioritise money and power over relationships
• Come across as charming and confident
• Exploit and manipulate others to get ahead
• Lie and deceive when required
• Use flattery often
• Lacking in principles and values
• Can come across as aloof or hard to really get to know
• Cynical of goodness and morality
• Capable of causing others harm to achieve their means
• Low levels of empathy
• Often avoid commitment and emotional attachments
• Can be very patient due to calculating nature
• Rarely reveal their true intentions
• Prone to casual sex encounters
• Can be good at reading social situations and others
• Lack of warmth in social interactions
• Not always aware of the consequences of their actions
• Might struggle to identify their own emotions

The traits of narcissism:

• Reacting to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation
• Taking advantage of others to reach own goals
• Exaggerating own importance, achievements, and talents
• Imagining unrealistic fantasies of success, beauty, power, intelligence, or romance
• Requiring constant attention and positive reinforcement from others
• Becoming jealous easily
• Lacking empathy and disregarding the feelings of others
• Being obsessed with self
• Pursuing mainly selfish goals
• Trouble keeping healthy relationships
• Becoming easily hurt and rejected
• Wanting “the best” of everything
• Appearing unemotional

The traits of psychopathy

• Lack of empathy, guilt, conscience or remorse
• Shallow experiences of feelings or emotions
• Impulsivity and a weak ability to defer gratification and control behavior
• Superficial charm and glibness
• Irresponsibility and a failure to accept responsibility for their actions
• A grandiose sense of their own worth

I think all of these traits melt together in the dark, stinky poo-stew that is SCROTUS's psyche.


The Cult.

Some have described Trump as a cult leader. Steven Hassan, former member of the "Moonies" cult, develops this theory in his book The Cult of Trump. Anthony Scaramucci, 10-day Whitewash House Communications Director and recovered Trump supporter, also describes the phenomenon in cult terms.

Clay Jones

 Our friend Maria Konnikova looks at this con/cult/religion thing.

Traits of cult leaders

Cult leaders are typically narcissistic and very charismatic. They seem like they can provide what you are looking for, but they aspire to have power and control, taking rather than giving.

The Cult Education Institute describes potentially unsafe group/leader as:

• Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability
• No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry
• No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement
• Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions
• There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil
• Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances
• There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader
• Followers feel they can never be "good enough"
• The group/leader is always right
• The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible

Yeah. That's him. That's the president* of the United States.


The Abuser.

On these pages, I have written about the Abuser-in-Chief. Like an abuser, 45 uses fear to control his victims.

On the Cult Education website, they also give information about abusive relationships and the narcissistic tendencies of abusers. The New Yorker has described his language as the language of domestic violence. The Atlantic has also drawn parallels between his behavior and that of an abuser. And of course, we have ample evidence of his sexual abuse of women throughout the years. He abuses those close to him; he abuses who he can reach; he abuses the country.

The con man, the cult leader, the domestic abuser, are all just sides of the same pyramid. At the top, sits a dangerous man.

But these traits do not exist in a vacuum. The person with these traits needs a recipient.

➼ The con man has his mark. 

➼ The cult leader has his followers. 

➼ The abuser has his victim. 

➼ The "president" has his base.

The victims.

Maria Konnikova, again, on the psychology of the mark. The victim is usually emotionally vulnerable, lacking something, and trusting. The con artist can read what the victim needs, and he plays on that to turn it around to convince the victim to give the con what he wants. In the con's case, the victim eventually does some of the convincing himself.

Part of the psychology of Trump supporters lie in the psychological fallacy of "sunk cost." Basically, sunk cost is like throwing good money after bad. It's the opposite of "cutting your losses."

Sunk cost is the tendency of a person to continue to invest in a future event even when the past is no longer relevant to the future event. It can be an economic investment (continuing to pour money into a wreck of a car), an investment in time (attending a show for which one has a ticket, even though it won't be any fun), or an emotional investment (staying in a bad relationship). The person has invested so much into their beliefs that it feels like it costs more to let the beliefs go than to hold on to them.

Sunk cost is a justification, a self-delusion. It's not simply being vulnerable to a con artist. Sunk cost is irrational: the perfect trait for Trump supporters! And it's just where he wants them.

TRUMPeters have been loudly and staunchly, blindly supportive for three years. It's not psychologically easy to turn around and say, "oops, well, I was wrong." It feels better to dig deeper in. Think about when you have sunk time or money into a losing project. It feels horrible to abandon it, doesn't it? The tendency is to want to go ahead and finish it, despite the greater cost.

Several writers have described sunk cost as a trait of Trump supporters. Andrew Egger writes of the dangers of sunk cost in right-leaning Bulwark. Esquire has an excellent piece on the Trump base sunk cost and their remarkable gymnastics that they engage in to rationalize his irrationalalities.

Similarly, there's the psychology of cult followers, and as we've seen, TRUMPism has been described as a cult.

Cult followers have these traits. Remind you of anyone?

• Those who want to feel validated
• Those who are seeking an identity
• Those who are followers, not leaders
• Those who are seeking meaning
• Those who have schizotypal thinking
• Those who are highly suggestible
• Those who constantly blame others
• Those who are always angry
• Those who have very low self-worth

Here's a good read from the Utne Reader about Trump's cult-like milieu. Miguel A. De La Torre writes:

When authoritarian figures can do no wrong, the problem is not so much with the leader but with the followers, who, like followers of religious cults, willingly drink the proverbial Kool-Aid regardless of how high their IQ may actually be. Seeing their unearned, privileged positions threatened by merit-based concepts such as equality, they embrace cult leaders who present themselves as the only solution to their downward-spiraling predicament, or as Trump proclaimed while mounting the Republican National Convention stage: “I am your voice. I alone can fix it.”

Because only the cult leader can save us, he can do no wrong. Mao, Stalin, or Castro from the political left can do no wrong; Hitler, Mussolini, or Pinochet from the political right can do no wrong; Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, or David Koresh from the religious fringes can do no wrong. And when leaders can do no wrong, lemmings follow unto death.

It makes sense. 45 fits the bill for giving those in his base a sense of belonging. The racists and misogynists among them found that – finally – there is a powerful leader who shares their traits, who validate their beliefs and let them finally be free to express those beliefs.

Something else that helps cement his base: cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance "occurs when conflict emerges between what people want to believe and the reality that threatens those beliefs. The human mind does not like such inconsistencies: They set off alarms that spur the mind to alter some beliefs to make the perceived reality fit with one’s preferred views." The Right's cognitive dissonance is actually working to strengthen SCROTUS's supporters to him. They perform psychological gymnastics to explain away or justify his atrocities.

Here is another interesting article from Psychology today analyzing many other traits of Trump supporters including their obsession with celebrity; the validation of their racism that he provides; the fear factor and sensitivity to threat / Terror Management Theory (I looked at these traits in a post about characteristics of Trump supporters); and even the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

The San Francisco Chronicle gives us more about the psychology of his supporters. It talks about the powerful combination of repetitive lies, whose constant repetition makes them believable, as well as confirmation bias – the tendency we all have to look for information that confirms what we already think we know and reject that which doesn't fit our mindset. Those tendencies, combined with a strong sense of tribe, keep his base firmly in his corner. They aren't wavering.


The cherry on top. 

As I've alluded to again and again on these pages, I firmly believe that there is not only an intersection of personality disorders such as the Dark Triad, but a further intersection with a neurological disorder, which, when stirred together with the real power that the United States presidency affords, makes a very dangerous soup. When we stir it all together, we get the Big Con, the Real Big one, the Con that the French describe best.



Thanks for reading, sister and brother resisters!

Fight back! #Resist!