CONSIDERING DONALD TRUMP AS A COGNITIVE BEING (not first as a politician)
Bob Deutsch
I am a cognitive neuroscientist, not a politician or political strategist, and I’ve always voted the man or woman and not the party. So let me proceed from that position.
A person’s — any person’s — cognitive structure significantly determines to how they transform the world into their world. Every person embodies such a code. It’s how each person comes to believe what is believed and directs what each person forms attachments to. It’s how each person structures their playing field so as to exist and “succeed” in the world as they perceive it.
Let’s look at Trump’s cognitive structure.
THERE ARE NO PEOPLE IN TRUMP’S WORLD: People are self-defined, autonomous beings, with their own hopes, disappointments, coping strategies, strengths and infirmities. In contrast, Trump conceives of people only as pawns in a game that he alone defines the rules of. If you pitch him three strikes, he just changes the rules so you are only out after four strikes (and that’s forever open to his prerogatives).
All his life, Trump was inadvertently groomed as a cheater who wins at any cost to others…because nothing matters more than winning. Trump’s daddy and attorney Roy Cohn were his major caregivers who provided him succorance. Trump is like a Komodo dragon who only knows to patrol the border of what he considers his territory, and pounce when encountering any thing not a supporter or just not familiar to TRUMP. No questions asked.
Three corollaries immediately appear:
(1) Trump has NO LOYALTY; others exist as loud or silent supporters, or as enemies to be annihilated as incompetent or (if a woman) as not good-looking.
(2) Trump has NO EMPATHY; of course, if there are no other people in existence, no acknowledgement of another person’s feelings and point of view is required.
(3) Trump is PRE-EMPTIVE TO DOMINATE.
TRUMP IS A CONCRETE, NOT CONCEPTUAL, THINKER: Trump is not a complex or a strategic thinker.
Two corollaries follow:
(1) Trump is a one variable at a time kind of guy.
(2) Trump is predominantly visual, not conceptual. If, for example, immigration at the US southern border is a problem, build a wall. Problem solved.
TRUMP IS IMPULSIVE: he instinctually responds, no thinking required.
One corollary:
(1) There is NO CONTEXT OTHER THAN TRUMP — Trump feels he can do or say anything he wants, the law or the U.S. Constitution be damned. (Note: Trump would never say, for example, as the Ivy presidents did, “It depends on the context.” There is no context for Trump, other than Trump.
(2) Trump is ALL DEFENSE: Trump blames or insults with impunity, without any validity requirement or social grace. “Attack” is Trump’s only mode of existence, even when aggression is not necessary. So, in a sense, Trump is always playing defense. Male Hamadryas Baboons seeking to maintain their dominance exhibit a similar strategy, with the result being a very chaotic social structure for all concerned.
TRUMP CREATES SPECTACLE: His interest is in dominating, not governing. Trump builds the biggest buildings, flaunts the biggest lifestyle, has the biggest haircut and trash talks the loudest. Trump’s behavior is aimed at creating attention and revving up others like himself who mostly experience one emotion: anger. MAGA followers essentially see themselves as victims. Their anger covers up their fear and disappointment — fears of coronavirus, fear of job loss (often seen as caused by immigrants), fear of transgenders as neighbors, and in general, fear of seeing a more positive future receding beyond recognition. These people fear they are continually losing ground and what they call losing their share of “the goodies.” They perceive Trump as a way to tumble the hierarchy of elites, the traditional power structure that has marginalized them. Fear is now a covert force running through the American zeitgeist. The spectacle of the Trump Show is agitating the already-agitated.
NOVEMBER 5, 2024
The difficulty with fear is it trumps reasoning. Cognitively speaking, fear wreaks havoc on mature thinking. Yet, what the world needs now is imagination. Fear foreshortens the time and motivation needed for the mind to integrate differences and think imaginatively. We all live now in complex times: geopolitically, technologically and culturally. Trump’s world admits no complexity.
Fear is a rich soil for selfishness. The idea of “the common good” can be easily obliterated. “Me” is all that remains. A shared context or opportunity seems far afield. The world is more commonly viewed as a fixed pie.
As voting approaches in caucuses, primaries and in the general election, let’s remember Trump’s cognitive limitations and the awesome demands on the president of the United States. And let’s not forget with Trump as president he has his hands on the nuclear codes.
Biden is no bargain…BUT Trump is a square-peg that can never fit successfully into the Oval Office. He woukd not uphold the U.S. Constitution and would not vitalize the American public.
