A theory as to how Trump and others see themselves

By David Brooks / The New York Times

I feel as if I’ve spent large parts of my life reading dreary studies on authoritarian personalities. These are written by people like me, who despise authoritarianism, and they are filled with the familiar psychological diagnoses. The authoritarian comes from a loveless home; he is a bully driven by secret insecurity; he is a psychopath who does not feel others’ pain. But these studies never actually tell you how the authoritarians see themselves.

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Performance artists. People like Trump and Putin are not politicians; they are artists who create alternate realities. They tell stories, invent alternative facts, enact daily dramas, construct show trials and reinvent religions; they build a world. In their world, the people who felt humiliated are now dominant and doing the humiliating. Russia felt humiliated by the West in the 1990s. Many working-class American voters have felt humiliated by coastal elites for decades. In this alternative world, the snobs suffer. People support an authoritarian not because they like this or that policy but because they embrace the authoritarian’s artistic vision. Performance artists like Trump and Putin can be dishonest, offensive and outrageous, but there is one rule: They must never be boring.

Warriors and bureaucrats. In the minds of the authoritarian wolves, history is a Manichaean struggle. It’s not between left and right or rich and poor; it’s between the warriors and the weenies. The warriors see themselves as the strong ones, the men and women of steel, the masters of aggression. They are the kinds of men you saw at the Republican National Convention — Dana White, Hulk Hogan — the kinds of men Pete Hegseth and J.D. Vance are playacting at. The warriors recognize one another — the AfD in Germany; Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. There’s a hint of the wild animal to them: no rules, no limits, just the law of the jungle.

The bureaucrats, in their eyes, are the PowerPoint people, who went to law school (like every Democratic presidential nominee after 1980) — the weaklings who have segregated themselves at fancy conferences where they nibble canapés and don’t have to encounter brutal reality. They are seen as emasculated types who take paid paternity leave, admire the European Union and get intimidated into telling you their pronouns.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/brooks-a-theory-as-to-how-trump-and-others-see-themselves/