Psychology, Responsibility, and Blame

I think it was the conservative pundit Tom Nichols who wrote a brief comment a day or two ago, about how Trump had done all these awful things and was an awful person, and “it was all because his parents did not love him enough.” That bothered me, because it was obviously simplistic, and also even sympathetic, as if it were not really Trump;s fault. There are unfortunately a number of people whose parents (or a parent) did not love them enough. There are many people who think that their parents did not love them enough; or at the least, carry with them the resentments of various things: “They didn’t encourage my artistic ability.” “They were too repressive.” “They were too lenient.” “Mom always liked you best.” (that’s a Smothers Brothers reference,Tom’s pat line if he is losing an argument with his brother). Virtually no one does not have some thing that they wish their parents had done more of less of. Some carry this with them all their lives, and never get past it

Fortunately, there are many people who very much appreciate and love their parents, and even have much more understanding, of them, as they mature. Our parents are humans, too. The old line about how “when I got older, I thought my parents became much smarter than when I was young,” is very telling. But of course this is all so complex that it can never be fully unraveled throughout the many thousands of years of parents and children.

How much free will do people have? Who can can answer that? How much power does someone have to overcome a difficult upbringing of whatever sort? Freud seemed to believe that by age five or so, our natures and personalities were pretty much fixed; but even acknowledging his great contributions to the study of human psychology (and I know that many have objections to much of it), I don’t agree, though of course that may be wishful thinking to some extent. I think that children can grow into decent adults, even if they have some flaws or even demons in their nature. I don’t believe that it is all predetermined by age five. I know that what might be called the Naturalistic type of novels seemed to propound that humans were pretty much the victims of their circumstances, could not escape them, and were usually eventually ground down by them. One can debate that point, it is certainly a legitimate view, though I always tend toward the more Romantic one, that people can learn, can improve,and can even escape their circumstances, though we know that in some cases that can be very difficult. But it should not be an all-encompassing excuse, one wants to believe that people can surmount at least some of their upbringing,, and early experiences.

So Trump had a very rich father who was apparently a Nazi, in nature and in beliefs. Mary Trump, his brave niece, wrote a whole book about Trump, how his nature was shaped by his father, and to a lesser extent, his mother. His father taught him that there were only winners and losers in life, and that if he was not a winner, he was a loser. His father gave him immense amounts of money, and bailed him out over and over. Donald Trump never was held responsible for anything in legal or financial terms. That of course continued throughout his life, where he associated himself with people like Roy Cohn and Roger Stone, and learned that if you sue, and if you dare your creditors or the people you have cheated, to sue, you can usually outlast them, particularly if you have a large amount of money. So he went through life breaking things and abusing people, and he always got away with it, just like he is very possibly going to get away with sadistically and very deliberately inciting an armed insurrection at the Capitol, which cost lives, and very nearly cost many more, perhaps all the Democrats in the Congress, and the Vice-President, plus hundreds of police officers. And once again, his mafiosi, actual or figurative, are going to bail him out.

I have not read Mary Trump’s book, and likely will not, it would be too disturbing; we know what Trump is. So many people did not, or pretended not to;; made every excuse for him, even admired the abuse and sadism. I think that she wrote that as a young boy he threw rocks at babies. Some do believe that some children are just “bad seeds,” evil from the outset, cannot be dealt with other than being put away. Maybe he was one? Carl Rogers, the eminent and humane psychologist, wrote that babies are not evil from birth, that the bad aspects of someone’s nature can only come from development. But at what age? When is it ineradicable, if it is? Mary and others who knew Trump well did say that he would do anything to avoid losing the presidency, and they were right; I don’t think that most of us realized just how far he would go. He is clearly unsalvageable as a human being now, and when did that become the case? When he threw the rocks at babies, one of the most evil things one can imagine?

I have seen videos of Trump as a younger man, and he looked deranged. He would talk in a weird sing-song voice, the younger version of the more recent voice that he would use to cajole and demand and brainwash his marks. The speech that we now have seen many times, him exhorting his mob near the Capitol, has all the marks of that. Repetition of the same phrases: “steal.” “it was stolen from you.” “It is a terrible thing.” “Everybody knows it.” “I need you to fight.” “Fight.” It is almost like a hypnotist, even though it doesn’t work on us. Did he learn the ability to get other people do his evil work for him? Hitler had that ability,and various other demagogue in history. Trump seems stupider than most of them, lies about everything, does nothing good for anybody but himself and those most loyal to him, and yet he ha managed to convince millions of people that he is for them, that they are all in this together, when obviously, they are all doing it just for the gratification of his id impulses, to use Freud’s term.

So back to the original question: Is Donald J. Trump responsible for what he is, or was it his parents? Was he born evil, or did he quickly become so? At a certain age, was his nature indelibly stamped, so that the only recourse was for enough people to realize it and keep him far away from any levers of power, much less the most powerful position in the world? Was it the clever Russians who saw his nature, and used and exploited it for their own purposes? Was he their “Moscow Candidate,” groomed to destroy America?

Why didn’t enough Americans realize who he was,enough to stop him from ever being nominated,and then legally or illegally elected? Why didn’t the media, many of whom fancy themselves as perceptive, and gifted at ferreting out the truth, let him go, with a mixture of of amusement, grudging admiration, and even awe? Was it because their upbringing, however much better it was than Trump’s, caused them to resent or scorn Hillary Clinton, the “good girl,” who never got into trouble, always did her homework,and did the extra credit reports, and who somehow reminded them of their mother or their ex-wife, in favor of the “bad boy,” who slept with multiple women, molested others; cheated, lied and stole, and bragged about it?

In any great novel or play, there are characters of various gradations. Very few are wholly evil, but they do exist in such works. And there are always those characters who enable, who let things go, until it is too late; who think they are doing the right thing but are actually doing the worst thing possible; and it all leads to the tragedy at the end. Every single person has a certain amount of power to do the better thing. That so many people allowed and even cheered Trump on in his perverted journey, deserves to be studied throughout history. Can we do better? Did we think that Hitler was just an isolated phenomenon in another country, and that we Americans would never allow that? And how much free will was possessed by the various participants in this nightmare saga, including the Republican senators who absented themselves from the prosecution’s presentation yesterday; those who participated in planning the insurrection to destroy American democracy, and those who gleefully met with the defense attorneys in a case where they are supposed by our Constitution to be impartial jurors? Did the fault lie in their parents, or themselves?