"The History of the world is but the Biography of great men."
— Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship
No ordinary man could play the part that Donald Trump is playing now. No great man, either. Only the tiniest moral entity — mind, heart, character — could leave such a vacuum within the human shell. A vacuum is no mere hollow. It's a hungry hollow that endangers the world around it.
I used to work with a man who craved attention and praise every bit as much as Trump does. He was unlike Trump in most other ways but equally needy; truly love-starved, to judge from the few words he let drop about his mother. He'd boast to us of his accomplishments and then almost weep at the silence that followed. One co-worker strove mightily to help him out of his morbid state with sympathetic attention and lavish praise. He ate it up, but it made no difference in his need. The man was a perpetual vacuum. He didn't care to be otherwise, either. At some point in life he'd become aware of his obtrusive egoism and had learned the trick of declaring it when starting to speak in a group, warning that he was apt to go on and on about himself. Having done so, he seemed to think he had sidestepped any obligation to behave considerately. We were at his mercy.
It's impossible to know whether Donald Trump is aware of his egoism beyond noticing that others accuse him of it. However, there's no need to play amateur psychologist in his case. His niece has observed him with a professional eye.
Because of the disastrous circumstances in which he was raised, Donald knew intuitively, based on plenty of experience, that he would never be comforted or soothed, especially when he most needed to be. There was no point, then, in acting needy. And whether he knew it on any level or not, neither of his parents was ever going to see him for who he truly was or might have been — Mary was too depleted and Fred was interested only in whichever of his sons could be of most use — so he became whatever was most expedient. The rigid personality he developed as a result was a suit of armor that often protected him against pain and loss. But it also kept him from figuring out how to trust people enough to get close to them.
— Mary L. Trump PhD, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Any chink in Donald Trump's armor becomes a vulnerability for others: an orifice through which the inner vacuum tugs violently at the outer world, sucking in what it can and wrecking much more.
And that is the whole story of the part Trump is playing now. It's the reverse of a crime novel in which the apparent obsession of a madman turns out to be explainable as a rational scheme. One can look at his welter of actions on resuming office and make out some rational objectives, but the unifying factor is obsession. After all, the revocation of certain people's security clearances or Secret Service protection serves only to inflict punishment for injuries to his pride. The rooting-out of FBI agents and government lawyers who had any part in investigating him is a wanton vendetta. The breathtaking departures in foreign policy are of a piece with his vain pretense of knowing better than anyone else when the gnawing truth is that he knows practically nothing about anything and can only trust to luck for vindication. The slashing and smashing of agencies is a grotesque mockery of small-government conservatism. It's all a tantrum, the final towering rage of one poor little rich boy who sits atop the world's highest pile of toys and still can't catch a glimpse of love. It's Donald's bitter wish-fulfillment dream, and we're in it.
Now the vacuum commands the whole world with its inrushing roar. Tall buildings tilt toward the tiny man from every city. Forests tremble. The oceans rear up, and the clouds lower.
But you must excuse me. I've just this minute heard a thumping at the window. It's February, two years on, and I do believe the thing is back.
