I don’t think so. He is a pathologic narcissist, which means that he needs all attention directed at himself, regardless of the nature of that attention. He doesn’t really register embarrassment as most of us do, only whether it caused people to focus their attention on him or not.
While everyone laughs that trump shit himself im almost certain the guy has an embarrassment kink.
Submitted 2 days ago by Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 days ago
Maybe, but I tend to think it more typical of pathological narcissists to be only vaguely aware of such things. There is no shame; there is no self-examination, but there might be a more practical sense of ‘this might possibly hurt my position or self-interests.’
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Im not claiming to know his internal machinations but the man has consistently been in the most embarrassing situations beyond whatever I thought was possible for a US president. At this point he either gets off on it or he has no other choice as a result of blackmail or something.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 days ago
From what I understand, he’s been like this the vast bulk of his life. For example, back at Wharton he was evidently a dreadful student, but Fred’s money was enough to prop up his degree, anyway. In that situation I think most people would otherwise have been somewhat or very much humiliated by crashing out like that, but for him, it was one in a long series of situations, feeling empowered by exceptionalism, considering himself ‘special’ for being able to break the common rules with impunity, and do whatever he wanted. Just look at the beauty pageant shenanigans and countless other examples to see situations where embarrassment just doesn’t seem to register with him. All part of the elitist mindset of ‘rules and norms are for other people; they don’t apply to me.’
For decent people, I’m sure it makes perfect sense to otherwise interpret much of that as an embarrassment kink, but (again) I think it’s more a case of it largely not registering with people like that. Also kind of goes hand in hand with being a professional bullshit artist– as in, they can do the worst things right in front of you, with the confidence of being able to persuade you that you didn’t actually see what you just witnessed. And its not just being a good BS artist at that point; it’s also a case of being backed by real wealth, power, influence, and underlying threats, persuading loads of people to keep showing him the knee even years ago. And that gets normalized over time…