Canadian PM
Mark Carney has decided, it seems, that the way to handle Donald Trump is to
praise him lavishly in public.
This is presumably
based on the sophomoric assumption that Trump is a narcissist. Narcissists are
notoriously susceptible to flattery.
Trump is
not. Both Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott tried this in the VP stakes. Not only did
they not get picked— but a few brief weeks for Ramaswamy, neither even made it
into the administration.
Trump is
just as immune from flattery as he is from insult. Showing, if it were not
already obvious, that he is not a narcissist.
The last
thing a narcissist would do is surround himself with subordinates who might steal
the limelight. Instead, Trump picked a strong cabinet including charismatic people
with their own followings: RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rudio,
Christie Noem, Tom Homan, Kash Patel. He is happy to give VP Vance prominence
and camera time, for example in the public negotiations with Zelensky.
Narcissists
are never creative thinkers; they fear the spontaneity that creativity
requires. It means a loss of control. Trump is creative in government, full of
new policy ideas, and able to speak for hours entertainingly without notes.
Narcissists
also lack stamina. As soon as something seems hard, and they get a whiff of
failure, they will quit. Trump is just the reverse of that, seemingly not even
slowed down by political attacks, personal insults, legal attacks, deplatforming,
attempted assassination, and electoral defeat.
Trump is
the anti-narcissist. He seems to have absolutely no ego.
And Carney
is showing himself to be painfully stupid.
No comments:
Post a Comment