Much of what Donald Trump has said and done has struck me as bad. I don’t like it that he takes every criticism personally. He says things that make me wince. He’s often gauche. And yet Trump is sailing to the Republican nomination, so what do I know?
Donald Trump is the prole whisperer (a comment I read on Steve Sailer’s blog). He’s the most Australian candidate I remember in America, perhaps the most Israeli candidate too.
Steve Sailer writes: Another feminine aspect to Trump is that he Takes Everything Personally. Trump’s is an extreme version of this trait that’s actually pretty common among Big Men, who, in contrast to Nerds, are very aware of their individual human relationships.
In contrast, Reagan tended to be focused on principles and used individuals in his speeches as examples of general patterns. A competent newspaper columnist, Reagan was fairly abstracted and disengaged from actual individual people around him (as his children regretted), especially for a movie star. Reagan always regretted losing out to Humphrey Bogart the roles of Rick in Casablanca and Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of Sierra Madre, but Bogart was an all-time great at being in the moment with his costars, while Reagan as an actor was a little bit like Ben Affleck: serviceable, but not fully engaged. Reagan was a fine craftsman of acting, but not a genius at it.
I’ve always wondered why the key moment in the 1980 presidential debate was Reagan joshing Carter with “There you go again.” I never understood what was so awesome about it, but I think now that it was the moment when Reagan came down to the man0-a-mano level and exerted interpersonal dominance by dissing the President to his face. But then I’m not a Big Man, so I only understand these things at an abstract/empirical level, while Trump has an extraordinarily intuitive sales talent.
* Yeah, the further up the chain you go, the more petty people become. It’s why all those jokes about losing to the boss at whatever you’re playing with him rings true: bosses aren’t interested in winning fair and square, they’re interested in being the boss. Napoleon used to cheat his own officers at cards, and openly, too, because his ego was so vast that even with all of Europe cowering at his feet, he still needed to win the game in front of him. Or read What Makes Sammy Run? and marvel that the main character, even after becoming a Hollywood producer, still makes his childhood bully work for him as his servant, just for the mental satisfaction of watching his former childhood tormenter wriggle under his thumb.
And not only are powerful people petty, they keep lists about who was wronged them just to get back at them. Nixon was famous for his Enemies List, but all big politicians have them; Obama has been revealed to have one, although the press of course didn’t call it an Enemies List. Sociopathy is what’s needed to get ahead in bureaucratic situations, especially corrupt ones. Or at least extreme narcissism.
Women are better at backbiting politicking, so historically when a civilization gets to a point where it has a top-heavy bureaucracy and a regular army, you see more women gaining positions of power.
* I wrote a post about Trump last summer where I described him as the leverage candidate. He is the most self-aware candidate we have seen since Nixon. Trump thinks about how others hear and see him, even while he is giving one of his off-the-cuff speeches. It’s what make him a great salesman and a great real estate tycoon. He’s always away of the group dynamics and how others are responding to him.
He leverages his assets like no other candidate. As soon as he gets a positive response from the audience. he immediately starts to build on it. He’ll hammer home that idea and own it in your mind, then he starts looking for the next good deal in your head. It’s fun to watch, even for someone like me, who is not a big fan of Trump.
