demagogue on 6/2/2025 at 17:08

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I think it's exactly like his approach with Panama, Colombia, Mexico, Greenland, & Canada; good to bring them up. He floats a magic wish list and then shrugs at whatever the realpolitik situation hands down & concedes "victory" because he doesn't care about it or comprehend what's going on beyond the dopamine squeeze.

If we're disagreeing on something, it seems to be that you're crediting him to comprehending the issues at stake backing him down, and I think he just hears the first "no" and tries to spin it, first in his own mind, as a victory in some other way. The analogy I like for NPD is that he sees the playing field from 4 inches off of the ground.

He makes orders like a mob boss. He floats insane ideas and he wants them to just happen no questions asked. In the press conference I thought it was pretty clear he wanted Gaza permanently cleared of Palestinians and turned into his exclusive development project "for the world", like it's Monaco. He just hopes it's accepted, no questions asked. He gets impatient that there's not yes-men out there, and loses interest and shrugs the whole thing off. That's my reading anyway.

demagogue on 6/2/2025 at 17:14

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The literature on cluster b and NPD is pretty vast. 100s of articles & books of analysis are needed and useful.


Edit: Fine. If one were doing a proper analysis, the academic or professional way to do it is you work in concentric circles. You start with the outside big circles covering the most fundamental elements, the target person's overall psychological profile, the overall institutional and social context within which they're working, the main overarching parameters of the issue they're working on, and then you build off of that base to increasingly more detailed and smaller circles of considerations according to the particular context, like the specific political interests involved, the political and economic situation happening at that moment, etc., that tweak the outer circles... and usually there are diminishing returns as you get more & more fine-grained.

The point is it's important I think to start with the overarching fundamentals. For Trump, I think it's important you have to start with his NPD profile because that's the overarching psychological foundation on which his decision-making happens, and if you don't account for it, then you're going to be really confused why he's saying what he's saying. But taking it into account, a lot of pieces fall into place.

That's not true for a lot of psych profiles, like if you say someone is generally extrovert or has strong narcissist tendencies (which almost every politician does), that gives you one input but it's not usually dominating. But what makes something like NPD a personality disorder and puts it in the DSM5 to begin with, what makes it special, is because it so overtakes a person with NPD's day-to-day decision-making, you can't separate it like you can separate the hot (emotional) & cold (calculating) inputs for neurotypical people.

But again, it's just the base. Doing a proper analysis, you'd still need to get to finer-grained details. In this case, we're still talking about Trump & Jarrod talking over IIRC at least a year about getting a real estate deal out of this. That's a particularist input you have to add to the base that tweaks it. Etc.

Subjective Effect on 7/2/2025 at 15:29

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I think it's ethnic cleansing not genocide. And it's only ethnic cleansing if they forced the people to leave, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, I see why people are concerned about the suggestion. The thing is he's only going to be in power for four more years, so after this it might be somewhat more moderate. So whatever his plans are they're probably only got a four year sell by date.

Subjective Effect on 8/2/2025 at 14:15

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Thanks for the history lesson.

Makes no difference to what I've said though, does it?

Subjective Effect on 8/2/2025 at 15:41

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Come on now, let's not play the same twist the meaning game. Israel shouldn't be putting Israelis on that land at all.