I awakened thinking that on top of being insane,

[Hugin]

44. According to Mary Trump he has been in a form of 'institutionalization' his whole life...

Last edited Wed Oct 21, 2020, 09:42 AM - Edit history (1)

Which when you step back it can be seen to be entirely true.

Nannies, wait staff, handed off to various boarding schools... He's never been on his own or even slightly self-reliant. Always, a yes-person a short holler away.

Being surrounded by at-will professional sycophants has damaged him psychologically in so many ways it's hard to even see the life he's led as anything less than alien and incomprehensible to the bulk of people who've led typical lives.

Before he was 'nominated' a co-worker and I were musing about his sniffing and puckered speech. We concluded even at that early time that these idiosyncrasies were probably caused by a social isolation and nothing organic. Almost everyone you encounter in daily life's behavior is the product of 'nature vs nurture'. There are some things we do because of a natural propensity to do those things as a base. Then some of the behaviors either we do or stop doing are because of some external stimulus placing a reward/punishment on us to change. Most of the time it's in the form of a peer/parent/onlooker bluntly telling us via verbal/non-verbal actions that such a behavior is either pleasing/annoying/stupid. Through Trump's isolation and pathologies he has lacked these social cues and/or an awareness of them. Nobody he thought was important enough to pay attention to had ever told him the sniffing and puckered speech were not what someone who wants to move smoothly through society does. It was never corrected or if someone or group tried to put pressure on him to change they were sent away.

This is what unfettered wealth, power, and privilege does to people.