Crocodile Fears

Sociopathy: It’s not rare: some (or many) “leaders of industry” are cut from this mold: human simulacra. You could look up “sociopathy” or its more formal title “Antisocial Personality Disorder.” But knowing that a human simulacrum is simply an imitation of a human provides the key to this disorder. I can’t help associating the condition with the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

For all his wealth, The Donald seems to experience no joy. Which makes me wonder why he doesn’t drink alcohol. Maybe his father tutored him: “It’s a weakness, son. Lose command of your senses, and others will exploit you.” Some stop drinking because they realize the destructiveness of its effects on them. Trump may fear drink for what it could reveal about his inner self, his empty inner self, his joyless inner self, his manipulatory inner self, his spiteful inner self. Even so, Trump reveals himself daily, and the fact that he doesn’t realize he is doing so is a measure of his hollowness. How can he understand what he doesn’t have, how perceive what is beyond his perception, understand what is beyond his comprehension?

Tom (Montalk), whose real last name is Cox, I believe, describes the condition in great and chilling detail on his website montalk.net:

Their behavior tends toward being glib, shallow, egotistical, narcissistic, mundane, predatory, and materialistic. Sometimes these traits are camouflaged by a polished social exterior, but anyone with a discerning eye can see through the disguise. They lack individuality, independent thinking, and are strongly biased toward holding a herd mentality. They lack comprehension of anything beyond the material sphere of the five senses. . . . They also appear entirely incapable of empathy, soul-searching, and willful self-sacrifice. Nevertheless, in the presence of others they can put on a flashy show of concern, distress, or altruism for purposes of social manipulation; for example, crocodile tears to elicit sympathy, or doing something nice for another solely to guilt trip them later and extort a favor.

Pretty sure I’ve met that guy.

He scares me the way he scares children, who know when they encounter a soulless cypher. He also triggers my anger, and for all of the reasons above. He makes me think of Isaac Azimov’s The Mule, a character from his Foundation series. The Wikipedia entry describes him thusly: One of the greatest conquerors the galaxy has ever seen, he is a mentalic who has the ability to reach into the minds of others and “adjust” their emotions, individually or en masse, using this capability to conscript individuals to his cause. Not direct mind-control per se, it is a subtle influence of the subconscious; individuals under the Mule’s influence behave otherwise normally. . . .

If I didn’t make it clear in my “10 Drafts of Reality” entry, let me have another go at this, this time from the perspective of resistance.

The Number of the Beast (working title)

We have your number

We know where you live

Your minions can’t hide

From our winnowing sieve.

No Newspeak can fool us

No sham will be missed

No record expunged

No evil dismissed

No memory forgotten

No man, woman, child

No loss–no, not one

Not one reconciled

Til you strangle on bile

Lose your insipid smile

Your clownish orange wig and

Your neo-knack guile

Till your Empire burn

Your Trump Tower crumble

All your billions in banks

Repose in your urn.

And, yes, I realize the scansion is rocky and the rhyme close to none. I was aiming more at a prose poem than a sonnet. So there’s that.