The little boy who never grew up

Tom Friedman is writing Tom Friedman things this morning, about how if Donald Trump stays all focused and committed and immersed in the crucial details and the difficult diplomacy, and sees the current Gaza “peace plan” all the way through he should be given the Nobel Peace Prize, “or maybe even two.” Besides the screamingly obvious point that this argument requires conjuring a Donald Trump that has never existed at any point in the past and is even less likely to exist at any point in the future, I’m struck by how the most serious of our Very Serious People continue to try to negotiate in their own heads with a narcissistic void where a person is supposed to be.

Of all the very many disturbing things about Trump, the single most disturbing to me is that he might actually be more emotionally than intellectually disabled. He’s genuinely desperate to win the Nobel Peace Prize that went to a Venezuelan woman (DEI!) this morning, because the essence of a narcissistic void is that the pseudo-person that inhabits it is utterly incapable of feeling any sense of internal validation or self-worth. Trump NEEDS this prize, and all the other prizes, including the Michigan Man of the Year Award for example, because his internal sense of self-worth is utterly non-existent. An even minimally well adjusted and liminally mature adult realizes at least on some level some of the time that prizes and fame and worldly success are transitory illusions, that all is vanity, that suffering is caused by desire, and so forth.

Obviously the sort of person who wins all the prizes, accumulates Smaug-like hordes of wealth, is named president of this and chairman of that etc, is not likely to spend much time contemplating that everything is dust in the wind, and that success walks hand in hand with failure along Hollywood Boulevard. Still, in the case of Donald J. Trump, even the possibility of having the most fleeting moment of such an insight is about as probable as Trump composing an epic poem better than the Iliad.

And that, to me, is the single must disquieting thing about the man, and the shape we’re in.