Submitted for your approval

I was pondering Trump’s infinite pettiness in the context of Scott’s post about his threat to destroy the Kennedy Center if his name isn’t plastered all over it, and the following question came to mind:

Trump appeared to be genuinely pleased when FIFA, the super corrupt international soccer organization, awarded him a “Peace Prize” that the organization had just invented, in order to award it to him at the World Cup draw.

I realize that it’s likely Trump gets only fleeting pleasure from anything, since his narcissistic neediness is fundamentally insatiable, but my question here is, how is it that he does seem to get pleasure from something like a super corrupt organization offering him a ludicrous made-up award, because the people who run it are so contemptuous of him that they realize even something as preposterous as this will genuinely flatter him? How does this work? Is it because he’s too stupid to recognize the egregiousness of the flattery? Is it because he’s such a total emotional and moral void that even, or perhaps especially, this sort of incredibly obvious bit of emotional manipulation is satisfying to him in some weird way? Is it because he simply enjoys people groveling before him, because this reminds him that he really is Very Special And Important? Something else?

I’m morbidly fascinated by this sort of mentality, because it’s just so pathological and pathetic. I’m even more morbidly fascinating by how and why it doesn’t disgust voters, and even more so how it apparently makes him more attractive to a lot of them. How can anyone not be repulsed by this sort of astonishingly degrading to everyone involved spectacle? What is wrong with him, and more especially with the people who support him despite or because of what’s wrong with him?