My brother and I have been exchanging emails, arguing about Donald Trump. He’s a supporter. I’m not. When I complained about Trump’s dishonest behavior, my brother quipped, “Don’t you think he’s just a charming rogue? Tell me you wouldn’t love to have dinner with him, be entertained by him, and then have him stick you with the bill. Wouldn’t you gladly pay it?”
Well, no. I can think of a hundred other people I'd rather buy dinner for. While my brother and I have vastly different notions about what’s entertaining, it did get me thinking. Is Trump’s behavior merely outrageous or is it something more sinister?
It prompted me to look up a book I read 30 years ago, People of the Lie, by the renowned psychologist M. Scott Peck. In his fascinating book, Peck came up with a psychological diagnosis for evil. He based his definition on his patients whose neuroses didn’t fit among those listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but seemed mentally ill in a way that he could only define as evil.
According to Peck, evil is a particular kind of narcissistic personality disorder. The other name he gives it is malignant narcissism. Here are its main symptoms, followed by a comparison with Donald Trump’s behavior.
Consistent, destructive, scapegoating behavior, which may often be quite subtle.
Trump’s destructive scapegoating has been a hallmark of his presidency: he blames the decline of America on Mexicans, immigrants, blacks, and poor people, that is, the people in our society who have the least power to change it. If that's not enough, he blames the FBI, the free press, and, of course, his former friend Hillary Clinton. He routinely labels his detractors haters, losers, and parasites.
Excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury.
Have you ever heard Donald Trump question or criticize himself? Have you ever heard him accept criticism from someone else? Trump in notoriously thin-skinned. His standard response to criticism of any kind from any quarter is to attack and destroy the critic with insults and lies. “Anybody who hits me, we’re gonna hit them ten times harder.”
Pronounced concern with a public image and self-image of respectability, contributing to a stability of lifestyle but also a pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives.
Despite Trump’s lack of morality, he is obsessed with his own self-image. He thrives on attention. He brags constantly. He surrounds himself with status symbols. He carries his name around like a Golden Calf. At the same time, he claims he’s not hateful, even while calling people ugly, lazy, rapists, and thugs. He blames family separations on the Democrats while denying the evil of his zero-tolerance policy. Everyone else is a hater, but not Trump: he’s making America great again.
Intellectual deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophrenic-like disturbance of thinking at times of stress.
Trump’s deviousness is masterly. He has an answer for every criticism, even when his indefensible behavior is caught on tape. He pivots, he lies, he goes on the attack. He turns collusion into the deep state. Real news into fake news. He claims to drain the swamp while filling it, to help hardworking Americans while giving their money to the rich.
And Peck’s final point goes a long way toward explaining Trump’s lapses in logic and his frequent inability to express himself. Perhaps he’s so confused by his own lies that he can’t keep them all straight, or maybe the strain has simply worn down his mind. “Covfefe.”
When I reread Peck’s diagnosis of evil, it almost seemed that he had written it with Donald Trump in mind. But Peck wrote People of the Lie in 1983.
Everybody commits evil at some time in his or her life. What separates evil from ordinary people is the frequency and consistency of their behavior. Peck claims that we become evil when we refuse to submit ourselves to any power higher than ourselves, be it God, humanity, justice, truth, and so on. Evil people become so focused on themselves that they “may not even see other people.” Their aggrandized self-image becomes so important to them they will do whatever they have to, including destroying others, to hold onto it.
That’s why the book is called People of the Lie. The main weapon that evil people use to maintain their illusion of perfection is lying. They lie to themselves, and they lie to others. Evil is a refusal to grow, a kind of spiritual laziness. The thing that evil people fear the most is facing the truth, because that would mean acknowledging their faults, something they are incapable of doing. To maintain their grandiose self-image they resort to silencing and destroying their critics—socially, financially, spiritually, or physically. The evil must always have victims.
Evil people are highly controlling. They are incredibly strong willed. But they pay a huge price for constantly fighting and fending off criticism. They live in fear—fear of failure, fear of being wrong, fear of being exposed. The irony of evil, Peck says, is that evil people suffer horribly, and, he says, they should be pitied.
Pitied, but not coddled. They are too dangerous. Anyone who spends too much time in the presence of evil is in peril of becoming evil himself. It is almost impossible not to be contaminated by evil. The normal healthy person will get away from it as quickly as possible.
Evil has to be fought, but we can’t if we don’t call it by its true name. There is danger in calling someone evil. If we’re wrong, doing so could make us evil ourselves. But the risk of denying its reality is greater. As Edmund Burke supposedly said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
After rereading People of the Lie, I can only conclude one of two things: that either Peck’s definition of evil is badly flawed or the 45th president of the United states has already succumbed to it.