I dislike being angry. It's a wasteful emotion, putting mental energy into the land of what-ifs and useless imaginings, generating visions of violence and mayhem, and making me dyspeptic. It is a frustrating state of mind that feeds on itself and that is most difficult to evade. Yes, evade. Anger chases us, seeming to be always just behind us with whispers of betrayals, slights, insults, and other hurts that may be individually small, but when taken together can cause us to believe that everyone we know is against us and out to get us, and that we have to strike first.
Welcome to the world of Donald John Trump.
Trump's public face radiates anger. Indeed, it could be an embodiment of anger. It could have been the source of the idiom "face full of thunder." His perpetual scowl, which he surely practiced for hours in front of a mirror, is meant to frighten and intimidate. It works on some people.
What I have to wonder is why? Who or what has damaged this man so badly that he is unable to interact normally in society and the world? That he feels he has to crush or frighten everyone he encounters?
Anger so fierce has to have deep roots. Was he shamed by a bully as a youngster? Perhaps, but Mary L. Trump, Donny John's aunt, suggests Trump's character weaknesses are family traits. She notes that Donny John's father, Fred Trump, had his own need for recognition "that propelled him to encourage Donald's reckless hyperbole and unearned confidence that hid Donald's pathological weaknesses and insecurities,"¹ suggesting that Fred applied a kind of inverse Munchausen syndrome by proxy, by which rather that imposing symptoms of illness on DJ he could pull some sense of recognition or importance back onto himself from his son.
I realize that the last sentence is a bit dense. There seems to be no actual name for this kind of disorder, although it has been documented. I envision Fred standing in DJ's shadow, pulling reflected attention into himself like a kind of psychic vampire.
It occurs to me that the title of Mary Trump's book, Too Much And Never Enough, reflects, perhaps unconsciously, the idea of that strange co-dependency. Could it be that Donny John still feels his father's need to feed on his importance? That he feels compelled to garner ever increasing fame so he has enough to share with his deceased father? And is that need the source of his anger? We all know that Donny does not like to share.
It is asked why people who already have a shameful amount of wealth aren't satisfied, but seem always to want more, although they need nothing. I don't get it, but psychologist Roy Eidelson seems to have a handle on it. In his essay "Psychology's 'Dark Triad' and the Billionaire Class,"² Eidelson proposes that an intertwining of three psychoses, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism, affects the hyper rich, isolating them from the rest of society, and creating in them the belief that they are due more than anyone else. A link to his article is below. If you're interested in this topic it's a good read.
It seems I've gone off-topic. Well, no surprise there. We started with anger, and here we are in behaviorism. But maybe we're not too far off. As I pulled Mary Trump's book off the shelf I was struck by a niggle. The title, Too Much And Never Enough, pinged a trigger to something I read way back in my memory, and it finally worked its way to the front a couple of paragraphs ago.
The story is a novella written by science fiction Grand Master Frederik Pohl in the mid 1950s, titled The Man Who Ate The World.³ The very hungry man is named Sonny Trumie, and he doesn't actually eat the world. Here is a précis by the author:
This takes place in a world where the poor must consume to avoid waste. Sonny received no love except from his robotic companions. Being a good consumer was the only validation he ever received. His parents were too busy consuming (as was required by their jobs) to have time to provide love to Sonny personally. We have many billionaires today that remind me of Sonny. As a wise man once said, "I have something a billionaire will never have. Enough."⁴ The only way to achieve love is through consuming.
Sonny hates consuming. He has enough top-end toys for 50 children, but the only thing in the world he actually wants to have is his baby sister's Teddy bear, which the household robots prevent him from getting (yes, I get the Rosebud echoes).
Fast forward to an adult Sonny. Wracked by guilt because he could never consume enough to help his parents, he has created his own small world on an island, and he consumes to near death: "Sonny ate. He ate until eating was pain, and then he sat there sobbing, his arms braced against the tabletop, until he could eat more."⁵
The gist of the story is not Sonny's consuming per se, but the fact that his runaway consumption requires so much energy that he is beginning to threaten the rest of the world with ruinous power shortages.
I urge you to read the story. It's on Goodreads, and may be available in your own library or favorite e-book provider. Or you can follow the link below, with caveats. It's a pleasant little story as cautionary tales go, and an easy read.
But here's the thing: Each time you read Sonny's name, say to yourself "Donny John."
Because somewhere in that bloated body is a scared little boy crying for his Teddy bear.
---Diogenes, Feb. 11, 2025
¹ Trump, Mary L. Too Much And Never Enough; How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. p. 11.
² Eidelson, Roy J., "Psychology’s 'Dark Triad' and the Billionaire Class," psychologytoday.com, posted Oct.25, 2019; retrieved Feb. 10, 2025: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dangerous-ideas/201910/psychology-s-dark-triad-and-the-billionaire-class
³ Pohl, Frederik George jr. "The Man Who Ate The World," New York, Galaxy Science Fiction, Nov. 1956.
ADDENDUM: A few weeks ago we changed our name from Vox Populi to Vox Veritatis. This was done in the belief that since about half the voters in the general election voted for Donald Trump, we could not rightfully claim to be the voice of the people. That change was made during the confusion and chaos of Trump's first days in office. Having now seen the wreckage Trump is trying to make of the government and the fact that it is affecting everyone including MAGAs, we have decided that we do speak for the people, including those who were deluded by Trump and have now been betrayed by him. So welcome, everybody, as we try to navigate the nonsensical world of Donny John.
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