Parsing The "Hitler - Trump Psychiatric Files": The Takeaway? Not Good!

                                                                            

The narcissist authoritarian parallels between Trump and Adolf Hitler are delineated even further when one considers the psychiatric files of Hitler and the ones currently being compiled on Trump.

No, there are no actual released and documented psychiatric files for either Adolf Hitler or Donald J. Trump,  What we do have are expert analyses by psychiatrists in different eras (for Hitler) who've examined ex post facto everything he's done and said over his life, and a similar body of work now developed for Trump over his life - especially since the 2016 campaign. (See Addendum at the end to do with the 26,000 psychiatrists who've signed a document declaring Trump mentally ill based on their proxy assessments ). Hence, one could say the existence of a Trump-Hitler compendium of files already exists for each, based on comprehensive proxy analyses.

Five months ago I drew parallels between Hitler and Trump in terms of consideration of their premoral characters, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/10/narcissism-pre-moral-mind-and-donald-j.html

In each case, I showed the gestation of the particular narcissistic authoritarian complex arose from the mistreatment by parental figures: Savage beating by his father Alois in the case of Hitler, e.g.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/04/research.secondworldwar

And abandonment by his parents to a New York military academy for Trump (for making specialized switchblades, testing them on helpless animals). The effect of such treatments was spelled out by Harvey Hornstein in his book 'Cruelty & Kindness: A New Look At Altruism and Aggression' (p. 41):

"The baggage of their youth is filled with inescapable hates and fears. Mistrusting their own impulses, they are wary of others and the impulses they might possess. Their world becomes a jungle which must be carefully scrutinized because it is filled with human beings who harbor the 'evil' that they painfully learned to deny in themselves."

These preliminary findings prompted me to examine further parallels after seeing Harvard Prof. Lance Dodes recent discussion of Trump's "malignant paranoid narcissism"  on a  'Last Word' (segment titled "Mental-Health Experts Say Donald Trump Is Unfit to Serve." )   To that end I got hold of the book, 'Hitler:The Psychiatric Files'  by Nigel Cawthorne and examined the detailed traits attributed to him by Henry A. Murray of the (then) Harvard Psychological Clinic.  Murray was able to compile a file through the ex post facto examination of Hitler's thinking, e.g. as given in his book, 'Mein Kampf', as well as through the historical records of his speeches and actions, especially as captured on archival films.

The traits he found, included:

- Hitler at one time or other exhibited all the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia including: hypersensitivity to criticism, panics of anxiety (especially when left alone, forcing him to awaken early and pen missives of 'retribution', delusions of persecution by outside forces, delusions of omnipotence .  Murray at times wondered how Hitler could have escaped confinement at a "dangerous psychopath". (p 33).

Of course, one sees immediately many parallels to Trump's own behaviors, especially the incredible sensitivity to any kind of criticism - especially from the media (why he calls the press "the enemy of the people") as well as his belief he's being persecuted by outside forces - namely the intel agencies which Trump compared to "Nazi Germany".

-  Hitler exhibited a pronounced absence of objectivity, which translated into his tendency to project his own ego on external reality "to the point of delusion" (p. 51).  Analyzing his speeches and writings Murray found a disorganization of ideas and uncommon inability to express himself which at times verged on the pathological.  At one point (p. 52) Murray comments that:

"Hitler operated on thalamic energy rather than rational planning"

All of these have been observed in Donald J. Trump as well, from his notorious ability to distort reality by projecting his own ego and wishes onto it ("biggest inauguration crowd ever",  "greatest electoral win since Reagan" etc.), to the inability to express himself as a rational, mature adult man ("Believe me you're gonna luv it!"), to his tendency to operate according to his "gut" and "instincts" (thalamic energy).

- Murray dubbed the attribute he called "narcisensitivity" (p. 61) whereby he constantly exhibited a low tolerance for any depreciation, criticism, or contradiction - along with an inability to take a joke. Similarly with Trump one beholds an almost pathological sensitivity such as displayed in his ranting tweets against Meryl Streep for her innominate critique of him, as well as against Alec Baldwin for his Trump portrayal on SNL ("inability to take a joke")

- Among the most prominent characteristics of Hitler was self-exhibition, including self-display, extravagant demands for attention and obedience, desire for applause and vainglory. All of these are also evident in Trump, and we've seen how he went after Arnold Schwarzenegger for his perception he was second rate in filling the CEO role at 'The Apprentice'.  Recall Charles M. Blow's description:

"things had to be gilded to be glamorous. All modesty — either real or contrived to guard against exposure — was absent from the man. He was a glutton for attention and adoration. He chased the spotlight and pimped celebrity for profit. He valued flaunting over philanthropy"

Recall also Charles Krauthammer's comment:

"Trump's own instincts and inclinations (are responsible). A thirst for attention that leads to hyperactivity. He needs to dominate every news cycle which feeds a compulsive tweet habit. It has placed him almost continuously at the center of the national conversation and not always to his benefit".

- Verbal depreciation in belittling the worth of others, especially rivals and potential critics. (Fusion of verbal aggression and rejection).

As with Trump: Recall how he belittled a disabled NY Times reporter who criticized him about post 9/11 lies), as well as assorted others including the intel agencies, and the press. Also how he has chronically belittled women as "cows, pigs, dogs etc."

- Counteractive Aggression - always to repay in insult in double measure: A tooth for a tooth to avenge an injury perceived or other. Always to attack opponents, critics and frustrators. Inevitably the mandate is to: accuse, condemn, depreciate or mock an enemy - to his face or behind his back. Often by "unwarranted criticism, smear campaigns

All of which has also applied to Trump and his assorted tirades, and attacks on others. Once described by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer:

"Trump simply can’t resist playground pushback. His tweets gave Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes screed priceless publicity. His mocking Arnold Schwarzenegger for bad “Apprentice” ratings "

(Recall Trump's claims against Ted Cruz' dad, accusing him of a role in the JFK assassination).

In terms of this counteractive aggression,  Murray points to one of the bases was a quote from Hitler's Mein Kampf (p. 62):

"One can only succeed in wining the soul of a people if - apart from a positive fighting for one's own aims- one also destroys the supporter of the contrary"

- The incessant craving for superiority" (winning at all costs, devil take the hindmost) that actually arises out of an unbearable feeling of inferiority".

As Prof. Murray points out, Hitler derived his sense of inferiority from living in Vienna for four years as a destitute artist.  Also, even after attaining the Chancellorship he was keenly and painfully aware he himself came from peasant stock and there was not the slightest trace of the Nordic (Aryan) "superman" in him, that he came to obsess over and hold as a model to the German people.

NY Times op-ed columnist Charles Blow has pointed out how Trump hasn't accomplished anything in his first days on the scale of Obama, hence nursed resentment. Also, he's always been painfully aware of never having been accepted by NYC's upper class while Obama has been.  As Mr. Blow writes ('A Ticket To Hell'):

"With a hustler’s spirit and some sleight of hand, he made it, but not in total.  He made the move, made the money and made his mark on New York’s skyline, but he never quite made it into the inner sanctum of New York high society. I’m convinced that this is part of his obsession with former President Barack Obama. Obama was quickly granted the thing Trump never had: upper-class acceptance and adulation."

In like manner, Hitler never enjoyed the acceptance and appreciation allotted to Paul von Hindenburg, the previous Chancellor.

The aspect that bodes most alarmingly for the U.S. populace under Trumpism, as it did for the Germans over the years 1933 -45, is the deep seated insecurity which fed into the vitriol and aggression.

As author of the 'Hitler Psychiatric Files', Nigel Cawthorne, observes (p. 107):

"The insecurity would not go away because the security he sought was not outside but within himself and should have been gained by conquering unsocial impulses when he was young. Thee insecurities gnawed away at his psyche like termites."

And these 'termites' led to reaction formations that compensated by extreme verbal or other aggression. Cawthorne noted (ibid.) that "some psychopaths manage to suppress their unsocial ad anti-social impulses completely but not Hitler. This was also manifested in certain sexual proclivities wherein "the individual derives sexual gratification when a woman urinates or defecates on him."

Which behavior was documented by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele in his dossier, via the "piss video" of Trump made in a Moscow hotel in 2013, for purposes of "Kompromat".  Of course, the buzz is that this "has not been verified" - but hell, virtually everything else has in that document. And all we need now is to get Steele to spill the beans and it will be clear to all the extent of Trump's psychosexual aberrations. Not that this would matter to Trumpies.

The most red alarming warning of all, pertaining to Hitler (ibid.):

"The great difference between Hitler and other psychopaths is that he managed to convince millions of other people that the image was really himself."

Once that threshold was crossed, essentially the entire German nation fell into its own psychopathy. The  question for now is: Will the U.S. population fall into the same trap? First, normalizing Trump, and then making the error of being convinced that the image of a "real leader and President" is more real than the actual egotistic, psychotic narcissist underneath. 

Only time will tell, but a good proxy indicator will be to keep an eye on Trump's approval ratings. If they begin rising from their 42-43 percent we may all be in deep shit.

Btw, some in the media (Jeet Heer, 'Horrible Histories' in New Republic, April, p. 52) have claimed "to compare Trump to Hitler instead of to George Wallace is to perpetuate the reassuring myth that Trump is un-American"

But he has the wrong end of the stick.  First, while Wallace may have been extreme in his positions, he was not psychotic and could also form coherent sentences.  Second, the key issue is not to overlook Trump ascending as a demagogue from "American roots" but to emphasize the psychological afflictions and mental disease matrix he exhibits is not confined within any given national boundary. By extension, the mind virus that can infect a people is also not geographically (or historically) confined.  To see Trump's dysfunction only in terms of nativist criteria is to miss the larger picture - as Heer appears to.
----------------------------
Addendum:

On January 31 of this year, Psychology Today’s editors posted Shrinks Battle Over Diagnosing Donald Trump: Chaos in the White House Fuels Discord Amongst the Experts. The article reported on a petition by author and psychologist John Gartner, Ph.D., declaring that Trump has “a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States.” Gartner, a former professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, is currently in private practice in New York and Baltimore. To date, more than 26,000 psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental-health professionals have signed his petition, which has no legal power but drives home the point that these professionals are gravely concerned about the mental health of Trump. Clearly, these professionals believe there is ample material for a psychiatric file -dossier on the looneytune now in the Oval Office.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Props To Aussie Jim Jefferies For Exposing Piers Morgan As Trump Toady On 'Real Time'

Aussie comic Jim Jefferies unloads on the Brit hack Piers Morgan in an exchange at the end of 'Real Time'

As the hostility between Right and Left continues to mount by orders of magnitude, largely because Trump groupies live in another world of unreality, the efforts continue by assorted media personae to try to normalize the Donald. But he can't be normalized because he isn't normal. He's a fucking brat - a three year old - in a 70 year old's body, e.g.

He's  also a loser at his new job, and even bawled that the presidency has turned out to be too much for him to deal with. Too many details, too much stuff to master for an extensive government bureaucracy.  See e.g.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/donald-trump-stunned-to-learn-presidency-is-an-actual-j-1792215349

Excerpt:

“Being president is harder than Donald Trump thought,” begins the article, neatly capturing the blithe, criminal ignorance that characterizes both Trump himself and the many dozens of millions of morons who thought he should be the leader of the free world. Yes, being the president is a harder job than Donald Trump would expect, because Donald Trump had never previously held an actual job, because actually, spending your inheritance on a succession of failed cons is not an actual job."


 But hey, if the job is too much maybe he ought to resign. It beats wasting time tweeting and watching TV for nine hours a day when you're supposed to be doing the People's business (and that doesn't include pumping wares for Ivanka)

But never mind. Trumpie hacks continue to press the bogus case that the rest of us are "hysterical" in making the analogy of Trump to Hitler. But in a previous post I already showed the extensive personality disorder parallels, in terms of the authoritarian narcissist personality. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/10/narcissism-pre-moral-mind-and-donald-j.html


As I observed:

"The classic example is the genesis of Adolf Hitler, for example,  as documented by Robert Payne in his 'The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler'.     Therein we learn how mercilessly the young Adolf was beaten by his father Alois.  See also:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/04/research.secondworldwar

Alois, himself a narcissist at heart, vented his power  on his boy because he deemed him too needy and dependent on his mother. (A "muttersohnchen" or "mama's boy")

In the case of Trump, we've learned he was making special  "all purpose"  switchblades as a young lad that appalled his parents.  According to one site, "By the age of 13, he became a bit more than his parents could handle. They determined the best avenue for the young Donald was to send him to military school, New York Military Academy".  Without a doubt the young kid felt abandoned and probably unloved.

The effect of such treatments has been spelled out by Harvey Hornstein in his book 'Cruelty & Kindness: A New Look At Altruism and Aggression' (p. 41):

"The baggage of their youth is filled with inescapable hates and fears. Mistrusting their own impulses, they are wary of others and the impulses they might possess. Their world becomes a jungle which must be carefully scrutinized because it is filled with human beings who harbor the 'evil' that they painfully learned to deny in themselves."

Even more germane comparisons can be deduced on reading: "Hitler: The Psychiatric Files"- about which I will have more to write in a forthcoming blog post.

Thus, it was heartening last night to see near the end of Real Time (before 'New Rules')  when Australian Jim Jefferies metaphorically slapped the shit out of Piers Morgan for saying "there was no Muslim Ban".  The two had been relatively civil to each other until then - and after Jefferies first arrived on set- but Piers had been continually saying the Left and rational side needed to "take a chill pill". Maher tried is best to get Morgan to see reality, but we already know when a guy is captured in the Donald's orbit (in this case "The Apprentice") he is unlikely to come out against him.

So it was left to Jim Jefferies to dish out "licks like peas" starting with FUCK OFF!   To see the exchange in full readers can go here and draw their own conclusion. 

http://www.liberalmountain.com/us-politics/fck-off-comedian-jim-jefferies-blasts-piers-morgan-defending-trump

The choicest response to Morgan's claim Trump was no Hitler, was Jefferies' rejoinder:

"Oh, fuck off. This is what you do, Piers. You say ‘He hasn’t done this, he hasn’t done that, he’s not going to do all these things’. Give him a fucking chance mate – Hitler didn’t kill the Jews on the first day, he worked up to it.”

When Morgan called the analogy “ridiculous, hysterical over-the-top nonsense,” Jefferies got personal.

“You just like that you won The Apprentice and you have a famous friend, mate.”
Said Morgan, noting the crowd’s surprise, “You’re losing your audience because you’re sounding unpleasant…”

“Am I losing you?” Jefferies asked the crowd – he wasn’t – then flipped off Morgan.

Good on Jefferies for keeping things real and not letting Trump PR lackey Morgan get away with trying to make Trump's critics into hysterical banshees. In fact, the takeaway from history is that had the Jews in Germany become more alarmed by Hitler's antics early on, perhaps far fewer might have perished in the gas chambers. Who knows? Our task now is not to let history repeat even with assorted minor permutations, i.e. to enable an Amerikkan Fascist state.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/karin-kamp/71133/how-the-indivisible-movement-is-fueling-resistance-to-trump

Charles Krauthammer Admits Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy

"Trump simply can't resist playground pushback" - Charles Krauthammer, WaPo, 'What Happened to the Honeymoon?'

"The shortest honeymoon on record is officially over. Normally, newly elected presidents enjoy a wave of goodwill that allows them to fly high at least through their first 100 days. Donald Trump has not yet been sworn in and the honeymoon has already come and gone. "  - Charles Krauthammer

Finally, a Right wing columnist has been able to own up to why Trump's favorable numbers are taking a dump. Well, for the most part. That is WaPo columnist Charles Krauthammer, the guy I once had to hammer (7 years ago) about his bankrupt claim that JFK was a "supply -side tax cutter."

Anyway, in his latest column, 'What Happened to the Honeymoon?'.  after briefly teeing off on the "unbending left" for not falling in line  (accepting Trump's legitimacy)  Krauthammer gets to the real issue. The real reason why Trump has had no genuine "honeymoon" and his numbers have been tanking the past week or ten days.

As Krauty puts it:

"Trump's own instincts and inclinations (are responsible). A thirst for attention that leads to hyperactivity. He needs to dominate every news cycle which feeds a compulsive tweet habit. It has placed him almost continuously at the center of the national conversation and not always to his benefit".

Indeed. And especially as his many tweets - such as in regard to DNI James Clapper's recent comments to him about the Russian exposure (by former MI6 operative Christopher Steele) -   have been found to be bald-faced lies. Thus, Trump's claim that Clapper "denounced" the recent explosive dossier (on Trump's alleged salacious activities in a Moscow hotel)  is absolutely false.

In a statement released after their conversation the director of national intelligence actually said: “The IC [intelligence community] has not made any judgement that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions.”

Can Trump not discern the difference between condemning a dossier and withholding any judgment on it? If he can't then we must worry about how Trump will negotiate the parlous waters of state once he gets into the Oval Office. If North Korea or Iran refuses to be signatories to a treaty will Trump take that as an attack?

The next Krauthammer observation is even more illuminating:

 "Trump simply can’t resist playground pushback. His tweets gave Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes screed priceless publicity. His mocking Arnold Schwarzenegger for bad “Apprentice” ratings — compared with “the ratings machine, DJT” — made Trump look small and Arnold (almost) sympathetic.

Nor is this behavior likely to change after the inauguration. It’s part of Trump’s character. Nothing negative goes unanswered because, for Trump, an unanswered slight has the air of concession or surrender"

While diehard Trumpsters may love this sort of reactionary behavior, it doesn't comport with strength especially in a President. What it shows is that any twerp, misfit, or non-political person (without political power) can get under the big man's skin and make him freak out. In other words, it shows he is hostage to any insult that comes down the pike and from any direction. Whereas, as philosopher Alan Watts notes in his book 'Does It Matter?', the truly strong personality is able to rest content in its own fortress of confidence and doesn't need to react to every slight perceived or misperceived. This person- personality, has enough mental and psychological ballast to contain and blunt pure emotional response. But....a personality arrested at the infantile or anal stage (as Hornstein notes) lacks the resources for resilient impulse control.

Not to be too blunt, but Trump would be better suited to be a cage match brawler - or inflated, self important billionaire given to chiseling deals - than President of the U.S.

It also opens Trump to criticism that he'd be the last person we'd want in any nuclear standoff. Unlike JFK, who coolly resisted the Joint Chiefs when they insisted he bomb Cuba, Trump would likely comply - especially if he perceived Raul Castro had somehow challenged him.

The part about the behavior being unlikely to change is also disturbing, as it echoes WaPo's Richard Cohen who wrote that:

"Since winning the election, Trump has not moderated his behavior. He still behaves like a brat ..."

This is truly the sign of an infantile, anal-type personality who perhaps (as psychologist Harvey Hornstein once noted) took a longer than average time to get toilet trained. But again, this may also explain Trump's penchant for toilet bowl humor.   It might be the type of behavior that fascinates pugilistic types and general Vulgarians but definitely has huge disadvantages in the setting of international policy- where mental toughness is as important as physical. And shooting one's yap off via Twitter is not looked on as a sign of mental toughness.

Krauthammer again - remember these are HIS words, not mine:

"Finally, it’s his chronic indiscipline, his jumping randomly from one subject to another without rhyme, reason or larger strategy. In a week packed with confirmation hearings and Russian hacking allegations, what was he doing meeting with Robert Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist pushing the thoroughly discredited idea that vaccines cause autism?

We know from way back during the Republican debates that Trump himself has dabbled in this dubious territory. One could, however, write it off as one of many campaign oddities that would surely fade away. Not so, apparently."


But come on, Charles! Anyone with a grain of sense or insight knows that a person who spouts or steeps himself in fake news is also going to be prey for whacknut theories.  But I'd say a more stunning defect is just the inability to mount any kind of impulse control or self-discipline. That achievement alone would render Trump less likely to wander off the reservation into all kinds of bull pockey areas, issues.

It is good to know that at least one Right winger has the perceptual ability to see what exactly is wrong with Trump and why his presidency will likely be brief, painful (especially to the millions of Americans it adversely affects) and definitely the nadir in our national history.

Did I say "brief"? Yes, meaning - following Richard Cohen's prescription - Trump is removed under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

Let us all hope it happens sooner than later!

As We Feared: Trumpies Are Hopeless Brain-jacked Zombots- But WHY?

In the wake of Trump's ascension to power, many academics and others have been working overtime to try to explain how so many could fall for this character's codswallop to the extent of allowing him entry  to the most powerful position in the world. The race to understand has ramped up as Trumpies - as we call them - merely shrug their shoulders at multiple outrages, including: Trump's absurd cabinet picks, and especially the release of the declassified intelligence report on the hacking of the recent  election.

Many of us in the reality-based community feared that too many on the other side would yet again shrug shoulders, yelp 'sour grapes' or express contempt. We feared, and it now seems we are proven right, that this country truly is divided across perception lines which bodes ill for its future. Because a house divided against itself - certainly in terms of common perceptions - cannot stand.

A NY Times article from Sunday, exposed the mental, perceptual fault lines clearly, and showed Trump voters exist in a bubble of their own, devoid of historical or political insight.  One is also led to contemplate that their bubble excludes rational thought, though that may not mean they are of low IQ.

Work by Dr. Robert Altemeyer, for example, discloses a subset of humans he calls "right wing authoritarians" whose choices are largely driven by fear. Thus, they are largely immune to rational exchange and any digression from an authority template is violently rebuked, or dismissed. It is not lack of intellect that governs this but fear. Fear of the unknown, of the "liberal" (or Muslim) "other",  As one commentator on this blog has put it: "At heart, these people are afraid to the extent of cowardice and they will accept anything buttressing their conception of safety...no matter how ridiculous or absurd the prophylactic / remedial measure may be."

In a way this also dovetails with work by Erich Fromm on the  "Necrophilous personality".  Harvey Hornstein's profile of the necrotic personality (p. 41) is especially chilling ( 'Cruelty & Kindness: A New Look At Altruism and Aggression'):

"(These) intolerant, prejudiced, authoritarian people are ill at ease. The baggage of their youth is filled with inescapable hates and fears. Mistrusting their own impulses, they are wary of others and the impulses they might possess. Their world becomes a jungle which must be carefully scrutinized because it is filled with human beings who harbor the 'evil' that they painfully learned to deny in themselves."

The upshot from this is that their perceptions and political choices are skewed and distorted in much the same way Robert Altemeyer attributes to "right wing authoritarians". That is, they view the outside world  - economic and political - as "a jungle which must be carefully scrutinized" but also rejected if it doesn't comport with their Zeitgeist.

All of this is necessary to grasp the examples illustrated in the Times' piece. Let's look at a few of them, dealing with reaction to the declassified intelligence report (which I have also read and found compelling to the extent we have a national emergency on our hands):

"From the parts of the report I’ve seen,” said Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel who twice ran for Senate here as Tea Party favorite, “it seems silly.”

Silly? Really? That a foreign entity is intruding into our elections, something that would have elicited at least overt alarm in 95 percent of citizens even thirty years ago. But his remark shows the extent to which brains -minds have  evidently been twisted toward the authoritarian mindset, likely by decades of PR and propaganda that render them numb to reason, objectivity.

"There are genuine concerns about Russia’s cyberoperations", Maness said, but ""the notion that they changed the outcome of the election was absurd". (The report made no determination on how they affected the election, but this is not the same as Trump's claim that no affect on outcome was concluded.)

Of the comments he had seen from fellow Trump supporters on Facebook and in emails, he added, “90 percent of them are like, ‘What’s the big deal?’”

The Russians may have very well gotten involved, several people said. They added that kind of interference should be combatted. But many assumed that foreign actors had long tried to play favorites in American elections (NOT true) and that the United States had done the same in other countries’ elections (true, as with Chile in the 1970s, and Mossadegh in Iran, overthrown in 1953). 

A most disturbing theme that recurs is "Even if the Russians did do it what difference did it make?" 

And typically, many Trump voters did not need the Russians to make up their minds about Mrs. Clinton.  Hence, blaming her loss on the Russians was, as one Trump supporter said, “ just being sore losers.”

No reference (from the report) that the Russians had ALSO hacked the Republicans, but they simply didn't use what they found against that party.

Incredibly, even among those who were troubled by the hacks, few felt that Russia was a serious threat. That country was “a basket case,” (not true)  or not the powerful foe it once was (false, as they still have nearly 400 more nuclear warheads than the U.S.), Others said that North Korea, the Islamic State and China were the real threats   A claim difficult to reconcile with the fact that Russia has more than five times the nuclear warheads and missiles as all these other entities combined.

That those on the political right seemed to be warming to Russia was not seen as a particularly unusual development to the Trumpies interviewed, though some joked about the incongruity of the left putting such faith in the Central Intelligence Agency..  This, of course, is a variant of the post hoc fallacy, that because the political left may have earlier had issues with the CIA (e.g. during the Church Committee (FISA) hearings of the 1970s) they must have issues in all later years.

Another form of dismissal pivots on Trump's personality, or what Trumpies are confident is his personality.

Thus, one woman insisted “Trump is Trump,” adding “Do I think he’s going to become more of a friend to Russia because of this? No I don’t. I think — I hope — his focus will be on making America great again.”

Again, this reflects the clouded judgment of a right wing authoritarian who is prepared to dismiss obvious character  faults (e.g. lack of impulse control)  in the interest of embracing a faint hope of national betterment ('making America great').

Perhaps the most disturbing reaction of all was this, in response to the issue of the Russians hacking actually affecting the electoral outcome:

“If that’s what it took, I’m glad they did it.”  In the words of one guy from Louisiana.

Sadly, his remark says all we need to know about how our nation is now in the grip of unreasoning authoritarian zombots, inhabiting their own bubble, to the detriment of the nation.

Narcissism, The Pre-Moral Mind and Donald J. Trump

Again, we must thank Cheryl Mendelson, former Professor of Ethics and author of 'The Good Life' , who I earlier  (Oct. 11 post) referenced in terms of explaining the  nature of moral capacity and defining the moral character.   In the same work she explores the pathology of the premoral mind and narcissism.  As one reads through her chapter 'Premoral and Moral Culture', it soon becomes evident that Hitler and Trump (both as premoral narcisists) likely had the same childhood development.

Mendelson writes in terms of the parental element (pp. 80-81):

"Narcissistic parents tend to raise narcissistic children and this is one significant means by which premoral thinking achieves cultural dominance. Narcissistic trends have been linked to cold, neglectful cruel and unloving parents  or to tendencies on the part of parents to treat the child as a means of stoking their own narcissism with the child's achievement, beauty or popularity.....

Narcissism in the parent often combines with authoritarianism to create specific failures in child rearing. The parents' own narcissism is bound up in the need for power....and expressed in harsh and cruel punishment"

The classic example is the genesis of Adolf Hitler, for example,  as documented by Robert Payne in his 'The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler'.     Therein we learn how mercilessly the young Adolf was beaten by his father Alois.  See also:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/04/research.secondworldwar


Alois, himself a narcissist at heart, vented his power  on his boy because he deemed him too needy and dependent on his mother. (A "muttersohnchen" or "mama's boy")

In the case of Trump, we've learned he was making special  "all purpose"  switchblades as a young lad that appalled his parents.  According to one site, "By the age of 13, he became a bit more than his parents could handle. They determined the best avenue for the young Donald was to send him to military school, New York Military Academy".  Without a doubt the young kid felt abandoned and probably unloved.

The effect of such treatments has been spelled out by Harvey Hornstein in his book 'Cruelty & Kindness: A New Look At Altruism and Aggression' (p. 41):

"The baggage of their youth is filled with inescapable hates and fears. Mistrusting their own impulses, they are wary of others and the impulses they might possess. Their world becomes a jungle which must be carefully scrutinized because it is filled with human beings who harbor the 'evil' that they painfully learned to deny in themselves."

To cut to the chase, the effect of Alois' projection of his own authoritarianism and narcissism on Adolf created a premoral personality with premoral, narcissistic values.  In like manner,  Trump's parents authoritarian solution  to their little problem spawned the egomaniacal, bombastic presidential candidate we behold today. As Mendelson points out (p. 71):

"In the premoral mind, in place of moral individualism - the individual's capacity to think and act according to conscience - there is mere egoism: the demand or wish, to be allowed to do and have what one wants. The premoral individual who confronts a moral culture must cope with social demands that he regards as illegitimate.

Because of his sense of entitlement, his greed and his demand for superiority feel right to him and are not internally moderated as they are in moral minds. Moral restraints may provoke him to outright rage and hatred."

Thus, we beheld Trump's ravenous rage when held to account (by the still existent moral culture) for his groping and forced kissing of women without their will. (As disclosed in the NY Times, the Palm Beach Post and other sources). In response Trump's rage has turned to  gaslighting his antagonists by resort to claims of managing a "rigged election"  with the women as part of a "conspiracy" driven by "global power elites". In the same manner, Hitler violently reacted when the existing moral culture in Germany looked askance at his attraction to sordid, sadomasochistic pornography. He retaliated by actually instigating a blame game directed at the Jews (for producing it) and then dispatching his S.A. thugs to intimidate them with violent beatings.

Hitler, once he claimed power, then went one step further and began shuttering German newspapers and dispatching journalists to the early concentration camps. (He grew enraged at their constant criticism.) Will Trump do the same if he claims power in this forthcoming U.S. election? We don't know but one can't feel confident that the Constitution will protect us. Recall one former president referred to it as "just  piece of paper".

Mendelson goes on to observe (p.73):

"The moral condemnation of power and wealth gained or used unethically is felt as emasculating and compliance with the moral demand is regarded as effeminate and weak.

In these respects and others, the premoral mind is primitive and childish."

In the above context we beheld Trump fulminating at the media's holding him to moral account for exploiting a $926b write off as means to avoid paying taxes for nearly 20 years. (Trump insisted, consonant with his narcissist nature he was a "genius"). That nearly billion bucks came from the pockets of legitimate  casino franchise owners and ordinary taxpayers. In the case of Hitler, he mocked as "effeminate"  those who held to the Versailles Treaty and showed his scorn by his invasion of the Sudetenland in 1938, and Poland in 1939.

By the same token, Trump's bragging about his ability to just kiss women and "grab their p**sy" exemplifies his primitive and childish mind. Also that he could banter on such degrading issues with glorified frat boy, Billy Bush,  Meanwhile, Hitler was reported to have had a violent sexual relationship with niece Gabi Raubal.  Payne reports how he was obsessed with sadomasochistic (SM) porn and enticed Gabi to actually act out with him, mainly her delivering occasional floggings.  He appeared to require violent stimulation to get off. Most psychologists today would classify such behavior and preoccupations as primitive and childish, in the sense that only a regressed personality (trapped at the "anal stage" of development) would be so obsessed.

After ascension to power Hitler outlawed all pornography which had been produced in abundance during the Weimar Republic.  He also outlawed abortion. But these actions are also characteristic of the narcissist authoritarian. Mendelson again citing a key section from The American Law Institute, 1999  for a Handbook of Jury Research (p..87):

"Narcissistic authoritarians are drawn to sexual material ...but they profess to find the material offensive and seek tp punish those who possess it."

And Hitler did this, dispatching those in possession of the Weimar created material to the early concentration camps.  Mendelson's comment to do with the attitude of the premoral mind is also illuminating and may definitely also have application to the hyper-sexual mores of conservative Catholics (p. 157):

"The premoral mind confuses the disgusting with the wrong and retains an infantile fear of things sexual. Its rationality is overcome by emotion, fantasy, wish and projection.."

Some may think that this controverts Trump's groping behavior and sexual innuendo but they may forget the dynamic of reaction formation. That is, adopting a mechanism by which "emotions and impulses which are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency."  In other words, any sexual contact with women is actually anxiety producing for Trump (as it was for Hitler) but that anxiety is resolved by exaggerated behavior in the opposite sense.

But a far more serious matter than sexual distortion concerns how the authoritarian narcissist and authoritarian can draw minds of similar nature to himself..  In most cases those drawn to such figures are both "fanatical" and likewise narcissistic. One primary trait (p. 76) is the yen for retaliation to "return evil for evil" or just to get even. We see this trait with almost every move Trump makes, e.g. to use tweets to get back at one target or another, whether the media, the women now accusing him of groping, Alicia Machado, or trashing a 'Gold Star' family,  the Khans. He always wants the last 'punch'. It is impossible for him to "turn the other cheek" or  for his followers to do the same.

This reinforces the worst traits of the narcissist's followers, as Mendelson notes (p. 82):

"In any fanatical group, charismatic, narcissistic figures easily assume positions of power.  They  are idealized and worshipped by followers whose narcissistic hungers are satisfied by the identification with the idealized leader or the group he leads."

We see this with the Trumpies too. They identify with fellow Trumpies by their hatred of  political correctness (which is also the manifestation of a form of social moral capacity)  and the "establishment elites"  Their narcissistic hungers also compel them to identify with Trump and when he says "punch 'em out" they feel enabled to do it to the nearest anti-Trump protestor, as we've seen.  In a similar vein, Hitler's S.A. fanatics had no problem beating up socialists, Jews or labor leaders if they protested at Hitler's rallies.  Hitler had only to cast an eye in the direction of trouble makers for them to feel the blows from dozens of Nazi  (S.A.) clubs.

Trump's most vile recent transgression against the commonweal and polity is his repeated claim of a "rigged election".  At a rally on Saturday he blabbered at a rally to star struck groupies:

"The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect Hillary Clinton President".

Increasingly, Trump issues this gibberish in the context that it is part of a "conspiracy" to take him down. (See also previous post).  Indeed, in the past 48 hours Trump has claimed this tommyrot at least 20 times and even insisted.....wait for it....."Saturday Night Live" is in on it.

Any other person, say an ordinary bloke, would be locked up at Bellevue in a secure straitjacket and given ECT  and thorazine every three hours. But Trump can walk about at will spewing his balderdash.

Make no mistake that Trump's claim for rigging is an exculpatory move designed to seed rage in his more unhinged and gullible followers if he loses the election - which he is very likely to do and in a landslide. Never mind that Trump's election loss on November 8th will be entirely due to his unhinged, bombastic, disreputable campaign. In a similar way, Hitler's toxic narcissism led him to blame "those traitorous generals" for the failure of Operation Barbarossa and specifically the Wehrmacht's failure of will at the Battle of Stalingrad. Never mind it was Hitler's own fault for over extending his forces and also his failure to keep them resupplied during a Russian winter.

But Trump followers believing his bollocks that the election is rigged has hugely negative repercussions for the democratic process - namely the sowing of widespread distrust among a large portion of the populace.  This, in turn, destabilizes the political fabric and leads to loss of civility and dramatic increase in polarization.

Why do so many latch onto this nonsense, including some of the more educated, with degrees from Harvard? Mendelson offers a  clue (p. 82):

Most narcissistic followers "only mouth the ideas and mimic the behaviors required for membership in the group"

In other words, a herd syndrome - - with compliance dictated by the narcissistic leader who determines their identity in the "You're either with us or against us!" mode. Trump evangelical backers have even gone so far in their support rationalizations that they've cited "a Bible abounding in useful scoundrels". (TIME,  Oct. 24, p. 22). .  That is, trying to show that even the Old Testament God made use of "scoundrels" and vagabonds for his purposes. So why not the Donald?

Given "irrationality is also a prominent characteristic of premoral thinking" then it follows that the more irrational conspiracy claims Trump comes out with the more his most steadfast followers will cling to them. Again, they must be viewed en masse as a premoral, narcissist entity for which leader and followers find a mutual,  self-reinforcing basis in identity. This identity pushes Trump to ever wilder, more unhinged claims as it pushes his most devout followers to accept them.  Each new outrageous claim is then integrated into the ongoing Trumpist "identity" matrix. That includes that the election is rigged despite the fact general elections are not run by the federal government but by the states. And the fact of the matter is that the plurality of states (31)  have Republican governors who control the ballot boxes in a very real sense, e.g. access hours, locations, type of machines used etc.

The real danger is that the millions of people driven by resentment to follow Trump are unlikely to change their minds after he loses the election. Rather, they will very likely have their paranoid ideations reinforced by his loss and make trouble where their "rageful feelings" find expression. Who knows what might transpire? We can only hope it is not as bad as after Obama won in 2012 when numerous Obama voters were waylaid and beaten up,  campaign posters defaced with Nazi swastikas and KKK.

Mendelson, for her part, shows that the premoral mind (and narcissism) in this country is now ascendant, e.g. p. 76:

"The prevalence of the premoral psychology of revenge is obvious when we consider how common are the endless incidents of road rage, air rage, horrendous murder-suicides and shootings at schools, workplaces and public events. These incidents are so familiar that they are now cultural memes in the United States."

Sadly, even the defeat of Trump will not quell these tendencies and one can only hope the Republic is strong enough to survive them.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/69403/sodom-gomorrah-and-trump-the-evangelical-quandary
 

Racist Domestic Terror In Charleston, SC - What's Behind It?

The racist domestic terrorist, Dylann Storm Roof,  who needs to be taken down like a rabid dog.

By now everyone is aware of the massacre of nine African-Americans in an historical Charleston, SC church. Video imagery has captured a white gunman - now identified as 21 year old  Dylann Storm Roof by the FBI . This POS actually sat with church goers (doing a bible study class)  calmly for an hour before opening fire. According to eye witnesses this maggot Roof reloaded five times and at the end had taken the lives of nine (6 women and 3 men),  including the pastor, a black state senator, in an attack the U.S. Department of Justice called a hate crime.

Well, of course it is a hate crime! DOH!  One does not need a Mensa level IQ to grasp that. (Or shouldn't) Any little scumball who'd go into an all black church and gun down its worshippers is a disgusting racist termite - no two ways about it. And yes, his crime is not only mass murder but mass murder done as a hate crime. For this, this sandy-haired shooter with the fucked-up name, Dylann Storm Roof,   needs to be hunted down like a rabid dog.

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told reporters:

"This is an unfathomable and unspeakable act by somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind,"

Roof  may have a "deranged mind" but it was certainly filled with hate. Where he got it, who knows? Did he listen to too much talk (hate) radio, slapping down black people as "apes"?  We know, from David Livingstone's book 'Less Than Human' that when  an entire race is denigrated whether as "apes" in the case of blacks, or "rats" in the case of German Jews (during the Third Reich) than the enslavement and slaughter of people belonging to those groups becomes easier because the whole class has been de-humanized.

Maybe also Roof fell victim to vile propaganda spewed as in hate billboards across the South (e.g. SPLC Intelligence Report, Summer, 2015, p. 5).  The epicenter of white nationalism and billboard hate now appears to be Harrison, Arkansas. According to the SPLC (ibid.):

"A billboard war that started in 2013 continued to rage in the small city of Harrison, Ark.,  which to the dismay of many locals has become a battleground for white nationalists bent on promoting racism and sowing discord. "

The fact is we don't know exactly what spawned Dylann Storm Roof's  hate, but - as previous SPLC Reports have noted - we know there's been a steady uptick in hate groups and hate crimes since Obama was elected in 2008.  Indeed, the hate momentum was fueled further after Obama's 2012 re-election, very likely because all the racists were convinced Mitt Romney the plutocrat would be the white 'savior'  to finally replace him. When it didn't happen, they went bonkers. So we beheld racist swine from Texas to Virginia hanging our president in effigy via the chair prop introduced by relic Clint Eastwood at the GOOP  convention in July, 2012.

We also saw students on election night at the University of Mississippi going ape shit,  hanging then burning effigies of President-elect Obama after the final, projected winning returns were tallied on CNN.. The haters simply couldn't take it and there also followed many incidents - mainly in the South- and often included presumed Obama voters beaten up. For what, exercising their franchise? Evidently! (They exercised it for the wrong guy, according to the misfits.)

There are a number of books that are useful in exploring further this penchant for human hate and degradation.   One such work is Simon Baron-Cohen's, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty. The aim of this (2011)  book is to explore how it is some humans can be so incredibly cruel, and wreak havoc on so many while pouring out racial, ethnic and other hatred. What is it that turns  people to misshapen monsters? Baron-Cohen, a renowned Cambridge psychologist, is well qualified to pursue this issue and answer the question of the ages: What is cruelty? What is evil? And can they be explained scientifically?

As an objective scientist, Cohen dislikes the term "evil" (freighted as it is with supernaturalism and emotion) as much as I do. In place he uses "empathy erosion" as an alternative. Empathy is just the capacity to feel what another person does, put oneself in his place, and hence - be able to feel his pain. For example, it would be analogous to putting oneself in the place of a poor black, say being racially mistreated or abused in the Old South, before Civil Rights came in. Putting oneself in his place, one would feel his pain and want to do anything to help him. Not doing so, and the person would either join in setting attack dogs on him, or stand by and watch while KKK'ers beat him, which is even worse.

Because empathy erosion is more measurable than the term evil (since one can gauge its presence or absence by using positron emission (PE) tomography in the region of the brain called the posterior superior temporal sulcus) then it's more useful since it's quantifiable. A typical way to do a base quantification would be to hook the person up then show him assorted photos, such as concentration camp scenes, and measure the response. If the PE  radiance region area is maxed out at a certain limit, than that discloses highest empathy. If not, then empathy is absent and hence there is erosion .

The Nazis were not totally insensitive to how their victims were feeling, they simply didn't care! They lacked empathy and hence displayed monstrous empathy erosion. Hitler displayed some of the least empathy, and as explained in one earlier theory by Harvey Hornstein (Cruelty and Kindness: A New Look at Aggression and Altruism,1976, Prentice-Hall) his own empathy erosion probably arose from having authoritarianism imposed on him: His father Alois used to beat the boy senseless, and often for no reason. Later, devoid of empathy, Hornstein reasons Hitler took out his pain on the Jews.

Did this little Charleston, SC racist maggot take out his "pain" on innocent blacks? We don't know because we can't be sure in his earlier life there was even some excitation of pain centers. Was Roof beaten by a gang of blacks? Did he call them "apes" or "thugs" to incite their reaction? Did a black teacher take a paddle to Roof's  behind for some misbehavior? We don't know, but in any case none of those can be used for justification of his bestial act. Even if Roof  was beaten senseless by the Crips it doesn't justify mass murder.

If a gang victim, Dylann Roof's  response ought to have been to man up and report his beating to the law, not become his own judge, jury and executioner.  If, OTOH, he'd harbored deep seated Obama-hatred and took that out on nine innocents, he'd also have done better to grow up and suck it up.   You don't get to kill nine innocents in a church to feed your hate of Obama!

What should happen to this piece of refuse, Roof, if found guilty and condemned to death? Maybe do a partial electrocution - to the point his eyes are nearly popping out of his head and his face is sizzling- then finish it off with a trip to the gas chamber.

In any case, an example needs to be set. The problem is it likely won't reach that phase because when finally cornered Dylann Roof - evident punk that he is-  will probably off himself. Or the cops will do it - which has the benefit of saving the good taxpayers of Charleston, SC hundreds of thousands of bucks!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-berkowitz/62712/homegrown-right-wing-racist-terrorist-massacres-church-goers-in-charleston-south-carolina

See also this  salon.com piece, torching the idiocy from some on the Right that "we don't know it's a hate crime" (Doh! We DO! Stop being so delusional and in denial!)

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/notallwhitepeople_twitter_racists_react_to_news_of_dylann_storm_roofs_killing_spree_with_delusional_denial/

More On The Necrophilous Personality

The ultimate necrophilous personality: Adolf Hitler. His "mama's boy" complex made him necrotic.

We continue now to explore more of what Erich Fromm called the "Necrophilous personality" to try to understand what makes it tick. We owe it to Harvey Hornstein in his book 'Cruelty & Kindness: A New Look At Altruism and Aggression' for elaborating the internal dynamics of this personality and also tying it inextricably to conservative and authoritarian tendencies. For example, noting on page 40 that "conservatives have much greater social responsibility to others of their own kind, than to those different from themselves."


This aspect of negative social exclusivity  is also why you can immediately recognize the necrotic person by his putdowns of all those he considers inferior or weaker than himself.  In most cases he will assert his type is invariably "stronger", "tougher", "more moral", more "law abiding",  "more patriotic" than those "hippies", "libtards", "black apes", "homos", "c*nts", "ragheads", "gooks"  etc.  Look for the model necrotic in Adolf Hitler, who - when Operation Barbarossa began to falter  (because the supply lines were over extended during the Russian winter), resorted to insulting the manhood of his generals,  ordering them not to retreat under any circumstances. Hitler, as Hornstein noted, was actually a "muttersohnchen" ("mama's boy")  though he postured a tough, authoritarian, no nonsense bravado. But he could afford to because it wasn't his life on the line, like those of the Wehrmacht troops starving while on the march in the Soviet Union.


 But where does the hatred present in the present day necrotics'  blogs and images come from? What sort of interior viper's nest hatches them? Hornstein cites (p. 41) Gordon Allport:

"Hate results from the mishandling of frustration and deprivation that have been allowed to disintegrate the very core of the ego. If this view is correct, the development of mature democratic personalities is largely a matter of building inner security. "

  Note what he is getting at here: that there is in this person's life a certain amount of frustration (maybe he's waiting for S.S. disability or something - but hasn't received it) and considers this like a personal deprivation, limiting him maybe to a tight budget and food stamps - when he'd prefer not to go that route. This ongoing deprivation and frustration then triggers an inner rage manifested say in his putdowns and hate scribblings, but which really represents a disintegration of the ego.

 In other words, his self-identity, who he thinks he is. In this light - when ego disintegrates- it's also interesting to see that past behaviors become undone and are no longer practiced, while more virulent ones are. Thus, for example, prior to the ego disintegration he may have been a more or less a religious person: quoting the Bible,  invoking Jesus, God or whatever, but now no longer does so. Indeed, his sermonizing is now replaced by steady hate and more f-bombs and insults per paragraph than Dennis Leary could deliver in a one night monologue. Most unusual, he isn't aware himself of how his persona has toxically mutated - but on reading Hornstein and Fromm we understand that the "worm" was hidden in the core of the apple, rotting it from the inside, all along.  Most of it stemming from an unresolved Oedipus complex.

Hornstein's profile of the necrotic personality (p. 41) is especially chilling:

"(These) intolerant, prejudiced, authoritarian people are ill at ease. The baggage of their youth is filled with inescapable hates and fears. Mistrusting their own impulses, they are wary of others and the impulses they might possess. Their world becomes a jungle which must be carefully scrutinized because it is filled with human beings who harbor the 'evil' that they painfully learned to deny in themselves."

He goes on to note that "socially inclusive people are different". For example, they are more likely to join the Peace Corps for the edification of their fellow man in a constructive social environment, than to  join the military, say to learn the black arts of assassination, at Ft. Bragg, NC or the US Army's 'School of the Americas' (assassin) school in Ft. Benning, Georgia.

The hardened necrotics are also more likely to put down the socially inclusive persons as "fairies", "sissies", or some other  masculine denigrating epithet when they - more than likely (from the psych profiles Hornstein notes) can't get it up, period, so have to use guns as penis substitutes. As comedian George Carlin once put it, in a 1992 appearance at NYC Beacon Theater: "What's a war anyway other than two nations trying to see who has the bigger dick, by firing dick-shaped objects at each other!"

Why are socially inclusive people more likely to join Peace Corps? Well, as Hornstein puts it (ibid.) they are: "more tolerant of differences, so bonds of WE are more prevalent than barriers of THEY." I mean think of it. The fact the PC volunteer is going to another country - much less developed and with people that likely look much different, including skin color- means one must fit this sort of tolerant profile in order to make it, whether in Barbados, the Phillippines or Africa. Hornstein solidifies this case by observing that:

"A steady stream of evidence has tied persoality traits associated with this behavior (tolerance- open to 'WE' bonds) and social orientation to selfless behavior."

On the other hand, a necrotic, who has to look over his shoulder every ten seconds because he distrusts everyone and isn't secure in his own person - is lost without his  substitute penis Glock-  would never make it. He'd wash out the first week, or first day. The socially exclusive  necrotic is just too aggressive, ready to punch someone out at the slightest provocation, to be of use either in socially constructive volunteering (soup kitchens, Peace Corps, Teach for America, Homeless shelters) or fulfilling the duty of democratically mature citizens, and hence improving the country by making it a more tolerant place.

But this is where the  "democratic maturity" of citizens noted by Allport comes in. If we have only necrophilous personalities then we will have immature and aggressive societies and nations.  We will also have immature politicians and leaders more inclined to solve difficult problems by military response than mature state craft.  We have to be prepared to pull more people into our orbits than the necrotics can get into theirs. Unless we prefer a nation replete with serial killers, war mongers and psychotics.

Are Some People Destined to Be HATERS? It Seems So!

Image put up on a hater's blog some time after Obama was re-elected.

The issue of people who compulsively hate, everything and virtually everyone (including family members, siblings, relatives) is a puzzle that has confounded psychology for many decades. Why is it some people are loving and nurturing almost from birth, and others are terrifyingly hateful - spewing venom and invective with almost every communication?

It appears Scientists believe they've discovered the answer to one of the questions that has plagued societies for millenia: Are haters gonna hate? Researchers have shown that indeed some people have a disposition to hate everything.

But this isn't really that novel, and Harvey A. Hornstein in his monograph: 'Cruelty & Kindness: A New Look At Aggression and Altruism' revealed the psychological basis for compulsive hatred more than three decades ago. He actually tied it to a very specific character profile.

Hornstein' research exposed what he called the "necrophilious character" - basically a lover of death, war, fighting and mayhem. He relishes death, dead bodies, broken limbs and worships any act that engenders them from war to mass shootings. He prides himself on a false machismo and often may have had military service, but oddly not on any front lines, more in the back - say as a cook or supply person. But that doesn't seem to matter. He proudly declares himself a "real man" (not any "sissy") because he has been near to death and isn't afraid. By his narrative he'd have you believe he'd have slaughtered all the Viet Cong single-handedly if he'd had the chance.

In truth, he loves the necrotic. As Hornstein put it (p. 34):

"They are passionately attracted to all that is harsh, dead, and decaying - and have a desire to transform that which is alive to that which is not alive."

They also detest with a passion anyone who is "biophilous" (a lover of life and service, volunteering etc) because they are seen to be "weaker" compared to the sort of people they admire: the cruel, the merciless, the heartless, the racially bigoted, and  the overall intolerant  (of "ragheads", "gooks", "apes", "homos", women - dissed as "c*nts" - and anyone else too different from themselves. This led Erich Fromm, for example, to classify humans into two groups: the biophils and necrophils. The former would tend to a constructive bent and go into professions that are life affirming, including teaching, medicine and the like. If they serve they'd choose a non-militaristic form such as Peace Corps. The latter would go into forms of work that often demean or demean others: prison guards, military and the like or sign on as torturers, say to waterboard prisoners or rendition them.

The most hateful and necrophilous characters chose to destroy only for the sake of destruction and became like the recently convicted Sgt. Robert Bales -  who massacred innocent Afghan women and children - or a mass killer like Andrew Brevik, or a serial killer, say like Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy.

Hornstein went on to point out (ibid.) that these necrophilious people - since they detested altruism, benevolence and concern for others - would never volunteer for anything life affirming  -whether Peace Corps, or even helping out at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen. In fact, because of their hatred, they'd rather see anyone they regarded as inferior or non-human as dead.  More likely, they'd volunteer to drop bombs on hapless civilians in foreign lands, or as Bill Maher once put it: "blow up any country with too many brown, black or yellow people". Then, on coming home, they'd pound their chests and declare themselves "patriots".

Early childhood experience, according to Hornstein, often also imprints its permanent necrophil character mark. For example,  if as a child the vulnerable little person was battered, paddled or strapped, he'd likely absorb the hatred perceived in the authoritarian disciplinarian and begin to adopt the authoritarian bearing himself. This bearing and attitude would then  be displayed as hatred toward anyone viewed to "need discipline" such as: free thinkers, hippies, women's liberation proponents,  civic protestors, MJ smokers (or just MJ law proponents) or anyone prepared to use their own minds as opposed to merely following orders.

The worst case would be for the more formative necrophil to find himself in a situation where either he was subjected to constant abuse (say in a military boot camp) or he assumed authority to mete it out on others.

Hornstein, alas, saw no way out for these haters because in the end  their only putative solution, love, was also denied to them. They saw everyone only as an enemy, except maybe their closest family members.  According to both Hornstein and Fromm, until love and tolerance entered the lives of haters, human hatred would remain an inescapable part of human life.