The psychological profile of a president whose IQ is “off the chart” |
The pattern is no longer subtle. It is not policy. It is a pathology manifested as power. Donald Trump rules through a series of shock waves meant to disorient, exhaust, and dominate. One after another, the punches come: mass ICE raids first in Washington, then across America; a world tariff war that penalizes friends and enemies equally; kidnapping Venezuela’s president; threatening to grab Greenland’s resources; launching broadsides against Iran and planning further assaults. The aim is not a strategy. The objective was domination.
It is governed by spectacle. And it has a rich tradition.
Psychiatrists who study authoritarian leaders caution against the temptation to reduce such leadership to a single diagnosis. The problem is not necessarily that Trump is “crazy,” but that he demonstrates a set of characteristics that flourish in a system that is hollowed out by inequality, media addiction, and institutional collapse. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton wrote of despots: “These are pathological individuals without being psychotic. That is, they are fully in charge of their actions, but are driven by a compelling compulsion to dominate, to be seen to dominate.”
The shock politics of Trump reflect what sociologist Max Weber identified in charismatic authority at its worst: power resting not on law or tradition, but on performance. Every shock becomes an endorsement of power. Every outrage fuels the legend of omnipotence. Order is the enemy, since order disperses attention.