snip

None of this should be surprising. In 2015, Trump, a draft dodger, said that Republican Senator John McCain, a decorated Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years, was “not a war hero.” Trump said McCain was only considered a hero “because he was captured,” adding, “I like people that weren’t captured.” He kept criticizing McCain even after the Arizona senator died. And during a political rally in 2019, he suggested that the late John Dingell, a Democrat who was the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, was looking up from hell. (Trump held a grudge against Dingell’s widow, Debbie, who succeeded her husband in the House.) He has made hundreds, maybe even thousands, of similar comments over the past decade. But if anything, Trump’s barbarity is getting worse, not better. As he ages, his inferno of hate intensifies.

snip

At this stage, more than 10 years after Trump first descended a gold-rimmed escalator into the political scene, there is a temptation to dismiss his comments because they have become commonplace. Don’t let Trump live rent-free in your head, some on the right advise. Don’t waste time chasing his foolish and cruel comments, some of his critics warn. It’s oxygen to him. His defenders insist he’s the P. T. Barnum of American politics, a brilliant self-promoter and showman, and that it’s a mistake to pay too much attention to his words.

snip

Heraclitus taught that character is destiny. In Trump’s case, his sociopathy is destiny. His narcissism; his lack of conscience, remorse, or empathy; his pathological lying and grandiosity; his sense of entitlement, impulsivity, and aggression; his cruelty, predatory behavior, and sadism—these are the forces that drive him. If we don’t understand that, we understand almost nothing of importance about him. And beware: When a man with Trump’s personality feels caged in, when he feels besieged and abandoned and begins to lose control of events, he becomes more desperate and more dangerous.

snip

Trump sets the pace, and his apparatchiks follow. Many of them have gained power and made money dumping toxic sewage into our civic water supply. But their devotion comes at a personal cost. Those who relish cruelty, who take special delight in dehumanizing others, are engaging in self-harm of a certain kind. “When we desecrate the divinity of others,” the author Brené Brown wrote, “we desecrate our own, and we betray our humanity.”