The Teats of the Beast

These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.

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A book published a few months ago created quite a stir but now appears to be settling, lost in the general uproar that surrounds the book’s subject, one Donald Trump. Regime Change, subtitled Inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump [1; an interview with DropSite News here] details the machinations that allowed Trump to get back into power and what he has done with it since. The story starts with the 2024 election and continues until Feb. 28^th this year, when Trump announced via his “Truth Social” (which means antisocial lies) that the US and Israel had launched a massive attack on Iran under cover of peace negotiations. That is, the crime of aggressive war was compounded by perfidy, or treachery, the second time in 8 months.

I find the book most unpleasant. There’s nothing new in it and it doesn’t give any background apart from a few thumbnail sketches of some of the more disgusting characters it charts. It is just a catalogue of conversations and plots between a crowd of truly objectionable people, none of whom should ever have been allowed to run a suburban garden club, let alone a nuclear power. Practically every one of the several hundred people mentioned shows a major personality disorder, the great majority seriously paranoid and psychopathic. At the top of the pile, or at the bottom of the pit, sits DJT, the overweight, dementing, incalculably greedy, cruel and dishonest sexual pervert who managed to fool 37% of the population to vote for him. But everybody around him takes their cues from him. The recently departed WH press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, for example, lied as easily as she breathes but was also paranoid to the point of losing touch with reality. The only thing that saved her was her dishonesty: somewhere, she knew she was lying. Trump’s offspring are hugely corrupt but embarrassingly hopeless at concealing it, which isn’t true of his son-in-law. Herr Kushner is even more corrupt than Dumb and Dumber but quite good at concealing it although such is his contempt for the human race that often he doesn’t even bother. If you really feel the need for a gloomy weekend, this is the book for you. But if you want to know what makes Trump tick, the best book is the exposé by his niece, Mary Trump, which gives all the dirt in excrutiating detail.

Mary is now 61, a PhD psychologist and author. She is the daughter of Donald’s older brother, Freddy (1938-1991), who died of heart disease accelerated by alcoholism, smoking and despair when Mary was aged 16. He had been pushed out of the line of inheritance by Donald and their father, Fred Snr. In 2020, Mary published Too Much and Never Enough [2], her detailed account of the family psychopathology, and there’s heaps. Again, it is troubling to read but she writes well, a light touch uncluttered by jargon or moralising. Her grandfather, Fred Snr (1904-1999), was an appalling character, utterly unburdened by any human feelings, who pushed Fred Jr aside and put all his efforts and money into Donald. Mary shows how Donald grew from being an almost uncontrollable child to an adult who feels not the slightest need to control himself as he knows he can lie his way out of any trouble:

Over time, that attitude – that he knew better – would become even more entrenched: as his knowledge base has decreased, (particularly in areas of governing), his claims to know everything have increased in direct proportion to his insecurity, which is where we are now.

Anybody with an interest in psychology or psychiatry should read it as it does two things very well. First, it sets out how characters are formed in the crucible of the family. This should kill forever the widespread idea that siblings have essentially the same environment: they don’t, at all. If they do, it’s luck because the undercurrents are so strong. Second, she shows how to write meaningfully without trying to impress the reader: it’s impressive for that reason.

What’s the point? These two books show how people who are attracted to power are entirely the wrong people to be wielding it. This is also true of money, because money is so effective in buying power although the genuinely wealthy often have little interest in day-to-day politics, partly because they can’t stand rubbing shoulders with commoners but mainly because they know they can get what they want with a phone call. Mary describes how her aunt Maryanne, Donald’s older sister, was promoted to the Federal judiciary by one phone call to the Reagan attorney general from Donald’s evil lawyer, Roy Cohn. How much easier is that than listening to loudmouths in a committee? She also charts how, as people go up the power hierarchy, their sense of power and entitlement grows.

When Trump first moved into the White House in January, 2017, he didn’t have a clue what he was doing. They hadn’t expected to win so nothing was ready, and it showed. His appointments were mostly ill-considered (Rex Tillerson, secretary of state, was appointed because he looked the part; he despised Trump and didn’t stay long) and they actually had no plans. Second time round was different. Four years in power showed him all the fun he could have and all the business opportunities lying around, then four years which weren’t fun but which convinced him that revenge is best served flaming hot.

So, after running on a no-war platform, he launches one of the dumbest wars in history, just because he can. Now that it’s clear the US and Israel have been defeated, he lashes out again with an economic “D-Day.” Granted the news of this new economic blockade was announced by the secretary for the Treasury, Scott Bessent, but the grandiosity comes directly from Trump himself: “Nobody can escape our reach, we will punish anybody who doesn’t do as we say blah blah.” That is, “We tell the world to jump and y’all ask How high?”

We often see comments like “They’re sick, they’re all insane.” Anybody who reads these books and watches the news has to ask: Are these people sane or have they all slipped into insanity? They calmly plan and commit major crimes against humanity then violently attack anybody who criticises them. Are they incapable of seeing that what they are doing in so many parts of the world is wrong, criminal, evil and wicked in every sense? No, they’re perfectly capable but they’re happily following Trump’s life script which says: “Take it if you want it. If you get it, crow how smart you are but if you don’t, blame everybody else.”

Didn’t anybody realise this before he was elected? Didn’t they look at his appalling business record and check his social contacts? Some did but the American system allows somebody with piles of money and absolutely no experience of government to elbow his way into the selection process and snatch the prize. Simply by lying and openly appealing to all the worst instincts in the electorate, he pulled off the coup. Second time round, they were much more organised but that raises an important question: why does the electorate have “worst instincts” for him to manipulate so easily? There are two sides to this question, human psychology and American sociology.

From the psychological point of view, there is what is normally called psychobiology and also personality. The biocognitive model says humans are programmed to form social groups then to try to dominate the others in the group and other groups. Our drive to dominate is very powerful but, unlike the need to breathe or eat or drink, it’s not absolute. It’s optional but we like it, being on top is a joy whereas being underfoot becomes unendurable. The worst instinct soon exerts itself: humans form dominance hierarchies and then spend the rest of their time either trying to push themselves higher or pulling others down. This applies on the very small scale, even a few people or a family, as well as on the level of mass psychology. A mass of humans is just lots of people going about their business. If, however, they all agree on the same item of business, they get excited and urge each other on, even to the point of doing stupid things. A person who calls out “No, stop this, it’s stupid,” will quickly be shoved down the hierarchy, to be replaced by somebody who wants to push ahead. People don’t want to go back down the hierarchy so even if they think it’s stupid, mostly they’ll stay quiet and simply go along with the crowd. So who urges the crowd on? The most excitable and least restrained of all. Mob behaviour levels down to the lowest common denominator. The process selects for idiots, and there’s no shortage of them, which brings us to the question of personality.

As psychology, if Mary Trump’s account of her appalling family life does anything, it shows the folly of thinking that all personality is due to genetic factors. The biocognitive model says personality is a set of rules. It is not a lump in your head or a cluster on your genes, it is simply the rules and beliefs you have acquired on your journey through life. A large part of them are soaked up early in life, even preverbally and thus without any words attached to them but they’re still very powerful. They’re not written neatly in your head like the rules of golf, they’re a jumble of explicit and implicit likes and dislikes, trustings and mistrusts. Complicating matters, how you’re feeling on the day often makes different ones rise to the top. If they tend to work together fairly smoothly and harmonise with the larger society, we call that normal personality. If they’re a mess of contradictions and lead to distress and friction with society, we call that personality disorder.

Underneath all these rules is a foundation called “self-esteem,” the basic sense of being a worthwhile person or, all too often, of being no good. Asked “How do you rate yourself as a person?” a lot of people will say: “I’m a piece of shit, a useless oxygen thief. I can’t do anything right and nobody could possibly like me.” This comes directly from early life experiences although it’s easily exaggerated by intense experiences in teenage or young adult years. Donald Trump has a most grotesquely disordered personality but he doesn’t actually hate himself. He is simply lacking any sense of self-worth and has replaced it with the idea that if he has his name on lots of things and is surrounded by lots of fawning people and gold, he must be the greatest. That’s so much better than thinking he doesn’t amount to anything in the world. Take those things away and he wouldn’t fall to bits, he’d simply sit in the corner gazing around vacantly. He also has no regard for any other human being or any animal or any thing unless it comes with power or money. Money, as Mary makes absolutely clear, is all that counts to him. And getting revenge for slights.

Behaviorally, as Mary shows, he learned very early that bluff and bluster usually win, that people want to be fooled and he’s the man to do it. A bold, confident lie usually wins but if all else fails, steal it or blame everybody else. He has no sense of honesty or integrity, words are simply tools to get what he wants and what he wants is to feel he’s the most important and dominant person of all. That fills the empty spaces inside. In order to get further up the ladder, he has attracted and surrounded himself by people of similar nature, flatterers and sycophants who are on the make. There are no decent people in his entire entourage because no decent person could have anything to do with him. That applies to all his cabinet and staff, to all his friends in business and politics, all the people who swarm to Mar-a-Lago and all the hangers-on, urgers, pushers, crooks both petty and grand, everybody. Not even his youngest son escapes. If you want to know what’s wrong with capitalism, it’s this: at age twenty, with no qualifications to his name and no work experience, Barron Trump is worth $150million. Money has been shovelled his way and he accepts it as his due because as people go up the hierarchy, their sense of entitlement grows and grows.

As for American sociology, this very ordinary chap says “We were raised to believe in American exceptionalism” (here, at 2.20). He is most emphatically not alone. Ask any Americans which is the most exceptional nation, and they will all smile and say it’s them. Now exceptionalism can go two ways. It could be read as noblesse oblige, the idea that being exceptional confers exceptional duties and high moral standards, or it could mean “We can do what we like and we’ll destroy anybody who disagrees.” Maybe the Founding Fathers had noble intentions but that hasn’t aged well. It doesn’t matter how high-minded a politician is at the beginning of his career, he has to play to the masses. Since the masses get their little erections over the idea of crushing any and every possible opponent, that’s what the politician tells them, just as Trump tells his dumb supporters at his rallies. People love it. A comforting lie is so much more fun than knowing they don’t count in the world.

Put these two features together, a political system that selects for people who love power and a social system that encourages people to believe that there’s no problem that can’t be solved by a B52, and there’s trouble. Malignant self-regard and the urge to dominate melt and run together in the concept of narcisso-fascism. The inherent impetus is that this must intensify to the point where it has now become a cult. Nobody dares say “Enough, let’s stop this and go home.” There is practically nobody in the US power elite who is prepared to tell Trump to drop dead and no outside forces that can stop the process. It either has to burn itself out, people have to become disgusted by themselves, or it must be crushed by outside forces. There’s no outside force can stop the US so it has to come from within. People have to become immiserated to the extent that they see they’ve been cheated, they allowed themselves to be fooled, and push the extremists out of government.

That’s why it’s good that the farmers who voted for Trump are going broke, that small businesses can’t get workers or supplies, the big manufacturers can’t get the raw materials or equipment they need, schools and hospitals are closing and so on. People in a cult have to hurt before they’ll admit they’re wrong. Because the megawealthy have a megasense of entitlement, they have to hurt very, very much before they’ll take their hands off the workers’ throats. The worse it gets in America, the better it is for the rest of the world – as long as they don’t do a Samson and try to pull the whole shebang down. Would Trump start a nuclear war rather than be pushed out of office? If he can’t get what he wants, would he destroy everything so that nobody else got it? I think that’s a very real risk because once people have sucked on the teats of the beast of fascism, everything else is tasteless. Remember what Marshall Gyorgy Zhukov said as he surveyed the wreckage of Berlin: “We liberated Europe from Fascism and they will never forgive us.”

References:

1. Haberman M, Swan J (2026). Regime Change: inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. New York: Simon and Shuster.

2. Trump ML (2020). Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. London: Simon and Shuster.

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My critical works are best approached in this order:

The case against mainstream psychiatry:

McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).

Development and justification of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At Amazon.

Clinical application of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.

Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:

McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.

The whole of this work is copyright but may be copied or retransmitted provided the author is acknowledged.