I worked with a mildly narcissistic psychopath for awhile. Compared to Trump this guy was darn near 100% normal. Compared to normal people he was aways off in left field.
The critical design feature of his brain was that he could simultaneously be totally in favor of X and totally in favor of anti-X. And have zero awareness of the contradiction in that. As well, he tended to be in favor of whatever he was last thinking about.
Every business wants high profits, a quality product, and to provide good service. But there’s a tradeoff between them. So each business decides how to prioritize those factors and how much to split that tradeoff pie pretty evenly versus very lopsidedly.
In this guy’s world, the pie was always divided 98% for his top priority, then 1.5% and 0.5 percent respectively for the others. But which was top changed about twice a day depending on the last phone call, email, or random cosmic ray that struck a brain cell.
And despite being a fairly bright guy he was utterly blind to the fact this wasn’t sensible.
I suspect Trump is like that, but 100x worse. His idea of Great is simultaneously all these things:
He’s in charge.
The Federal budget is balanced.
Vastly greater spending on the stuff he thinks matters. Which changes hourly.
Vastly reduced taxes on everybody, and especially on business & fat cats.
Business is booming.
The stock market is booming.
Working wages are way up
Payouts to shareholders are way, way up.
Worldwide terrorism is simply gone.
The US military is everywhere.
The US military is fighting nobody anywhere.
Smaller countries accept they have to put up with our bullying grabby ways.
Bigger countries accept they have to put up with our bullying grabby ways.
1: Bring back the rich barron days where a few people owned the businesses and workers worked long hard under harsh conditions for minimal wages, and were forced to buy from the company store. This seems to be how Trump views people, they need to work hard, like slaves, they are most happy that way and really don’t need much - and should be thankful to their boss for that happiness, and the few who can own such a business will get rich, which since the masses are happy working like slaves, the owners deserve the riches. By this and fucking the environment in the process, Trump wants America to be that industrial powerhouse built on slave labor so the barron-owners can deal with power against international competition.
2: Make the US a bully among nations, have them fear us. Not so much MAGA, as American really did not have this position as much as Trump is trying to get us to. It did share the stage with the former USSR, and we did bully now and again, but it seems like that is Trump’s plan for everything international now.
Trump has never knowingly performed a selfless act, and never will. If we ignore the idea that it was just a sales pitch slogan with no meaning, his MAGA statement inherently must be interpreted as “Make America Great Again for ME.”
From there, we can take what we know. He’s a nationalist. He is afraid of Muslims. He’s afraid of immigrants. He wishes everyone would love him, but is too dumb to realize that means listening to their complaints and doing something about it. He puts a lot of personal stock into his wealth. He hates criticism of any kind. He thinking bullying is how you prove you are strong.
So, MAGA means cutting off America from foreign influences so he can compete better. It means kicking out Muslims and immigrants who hate him. It means making a lot more money for himself. And he wants America to be so strong that no one would ever dream of attacking it (which would hurt him.)
And he wants everyone to tell him how great he is for doing all that.
It means he’s going to turn America into a dystopian hellscape, then step back, keep his tiny hands off, and let us recover to a fraction of the greatness we enjoyed under President Obama. He’ll then call that “great” and take credit for it.
“However, even if he didn’t use the phrase as a recurrent slogan, Hitler did at least occasionally reference it.”
“While an underlying theme of Nazi propaganda may have been “making Germany great again,” a message that directly contributed to Hitler’s rise to power, this does not mean that Donald Trump (or Ronald Reagan, or Margaret Thatcher, or Ferdinand Marcos, or anybody else) necessarily campaigned on Nazi principles.”
