Donald Trump, Tiger Woods, Bernie Madoff, and Dick Cheney: the Anatomy of Evil

On September 5th, 2018, the New York Times published an anonymous editorial: “Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office..... The root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” Trump’s behavior is dangerously unpredictable. He is the epitome of the Anomic Personality, whose major trait is unlimited striving. He shares in the symptom clusters of The Dark Tetrad: Aggressive Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Psychopathy and Sadism. His behavior and his own quotes convince us of the dangers of his continuance in office. Like other oligarchs, he seeks sex, money and power. Faced with charges by the Mueller and five other investigations, he lashed out by creating an “emergency,” a 35-day government shutdown. How Trump won, and why his base voted for him is explained in terms of U.S. history, national character, social-class differences in child rearing, inequality, and blind attachment (which may be in our DNA due to early Cro-Magnon parental hypervigilance for fear of predators). The United Nations IPCC Report tells us that we have only twelve more years in which to reverse global warming. After that time it will be irreversible! Can we let a president who doesn’t believe in climate change use up another six years, or one half, of our “chance of survival” time?