Trump’s Rules
- Never allow the public time to cool off;
- Never admit a fault or wrong;
3. Never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;
4. Never leave room for alternatives;
5. Never accept blame;
6. Concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong.
While anyone can recognize Donald Trump’s standard operating procedure in these six rules, this observation of personality type originated in a psychoanalytic report commissioned by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and submitted to the OSS in late 1943 or early 1944.
The report, titled “A psychological profile of Adolph Hitler,” was written by Walter C. Langer, a Harvard trained psychoanalyst, in collaboration with other psychologists.
A few other quotes from the report that struck me:
“Everything must be huge and befitting as a monument to the honor of Hitler.”
This reminded me of Trump’s “wall.” I heard him talking about the wall again at a recent rally and encouraging his supporters to envision what America would look like in a 1000, 2000, years. And that reminded me of Hitler’s 1000 year Reich.
“He conceives of himself as a second Christ who has been sent to institute in the world a new system of values based on brutality and violence.”
This also seems a chillingly accurate description of Trump.
“Many people have stopped and asked themselves: ‘Is this man sincere in his undertakings or is he a fraud?’”
Yes, is he a President or a reality TV star? And finally,
“He will go down in history as the most worshipped and the most despised man the world has ever known.”
As Langer said of Hitler, many have “spontaneously adopted a religious attitude toward him.” Other’s loath him. I don’t loath Trump. However, I find him exceptionally dangerous to humanity, arriving as he has as the right type at the worst of all possible times.
Why are we fascinated by this “type?” What hold did Hitler have on the German people? What hold does Trump have on America and the world?
It seems we love him or we hate him. Is there something to this simple and polarized response?
He’s like the numbers in the elevator we can stare at as we go down, stupidly unnecessary, but at the same time so crucially necessary. Each number blinking into existence on our descent, counts down to our doom or salvation. Our anticipation quickens. We feel.
In a world governed by our necessary denial of our own mortality (see, Ernst Becker, “The Denial of Death”) and the destruction we’ve caused to the planet, having this singular focal point seems crucial to staving off our mounting terror. While we fight it out over Trump, we, unfortunately, don’t do anything else. Donald Trump, perhaps our final circus.
A short reading in “Terror Management Theory” (Solomon et al) might reveal Donald Trump as a fetish object who reenforces a worldview. Whether we love or hate him, through him we see the clear binary of good and evil.
After the war, Langer wrote several book length psychological profiles of Hitler. However, for me, this document is the most interesting. Its purpose was to inform the U.S. military in the development of their wartime strategy.
In the document, Walter Langer successful predicted both the coup attempt against Hitler in 1944 and Hitler’s suicide. The entire document is available at the CIA library, and provides many insights into the psychological workings of a megalomaniac. The document was declassified in 1968.
