@DavidJ222

3 weeks ago

Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew Trump, or perhaps anybody like him. Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change? Trump was annoyed when Dr. Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch. His lie was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that lie. And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense. The key to Trump’s psychology is that he moves through life as “the episodic man.” For Trump, each day is a temporary moment of time. Psychological research shows that nearly all adults develop stories in their minds about their own lives. These stories — what psychologists call “narrative identities” — reconstruct the past and imagine the future. As you make daily decisions, you implicitly remember how you have come to be who you are, and you anticipate where your life may be going. You live within narrative time. But the episodic man does not live that way. Instead, he immerses himself in the angry, combative moment, striving desperately to win the moment. But the episodes do not add up. They do not form a narrative arc. In Trump’s case, it is as if he wakes up each morning nearly oblivious to what happened the day before. What he said and did yesterday, in order to win yesterday, no longer matters to him. And what he will do today, in order to win today, will not matter for tomorrow. What is truth for the episodic man? Truth is whatever works to win the moment. For most people, and every other president in the history of the US, an episodic life would be unsustainable in the long run. There is a primal authenticity in Trump. He tells you exactly what he feels in the moment. He lies straight to your face, without shame, without any concern for future consequences. It is the stark audacity of untruth.

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