felix dakat:
Perhaps you have what Eric Fromm termed an authoritarian personality ← Maybe → , and you think the country needs a strong man to whip the world into shape. ← Whip the world into shape? → That’s the image that Trump projects. ← No, it’s the image you project on Trump. → The people who support him are the ones that buy into that image. ← Ever heard of supporting someone for a particular policy? → He spent his entire adult life, cultivating it. ← Proof? → He is a perfect example of the adage” Fake it till you make it” For years, he had a phony magazine picture on the wall at Mar A Lago showing him as the man of the year on the cover of Time magazine. He faked it until that became a reality this year. He makes PT Barnum look like an amateur.
First of all, what sources are telling you this? If I could know, I’d be able to more discerningly tell apart how much of it is fact and how much interpretation (or down right lie). If, for example, a reporter at his house simply noted the Man of the Year photo, and then did some research to find out Time never published such an issue, I’d say there are several ways to interpret that. It could just be a joke he shares with his friends and family. It could be that he did do a photo shoot for Time Magazine, and they were going to put it on the front cover of their next issue, but at the last moment, something happened, things changed, and they went with someone else. But Trump got to keep the photo, so he framed it and hung it on his wall. Or maybe the reporter simply lied (we are in the age of disinformation). If on the other hand, this story comes from the horse’s mouth–i.e. Trump actually told the story himself–that rules out much of the above.
Second, so what if Trump practices fake-it-til-you-make-it? Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that the motto of most successful people in society? Isn’t it something that therapists sometimes prescribe to their patients? If fake-it-til-you-make-it works, wouldn’t you do it? Shouldn’t we all? If anything, maybe Trump should be taken as a roll model (perish the thought! 
).
But that’s not my image of Trump. My image of Trump is that he’s a brute. He’s not Hitler level brute, but he’s on the brutish side of what I think is normal US presidential behavior. I think he does veer on the edge of the normal range, but I’m not panicked that he’s going to do something crazy like kill 6 million Jews or starve a whole country like the Ukraine. He strikes me as very “gangster” (like you said) but also a family man (I mean, look at his kids compared to Hunter). And he’s definitely a shrewd business man, and runs the government like a business (is that a good thing or a bad thing? Idunno). I think he can be incredibly gracious when he’s winning, but bitter and immature when he loses. And I think he likes to play games with the press, saying things like “We’re gonna rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America”. ← I mean, I don’t even think he’s serious about that. I think he’s ego driven, not power driven; he wants to be great in the people’s eyes more than he wants control over them. And overall, I think he’s a good man for the job. I think he knows what he’s doing.
Now, I wouldn’t say I need a leader like that to “whip the world into shape.” I think I made it very clear in this thread that I agree with Bob in that America, and the West in general, has behaved (shall we say) less than exemplary when it comes to claiming territories outside its borders, but a president that can “whip his own country into shape” is just what the doctor ordered (and no, I don’t mean he should be a dictator over his own country). Either way, yes, he should be strong.
In any case, if you’re gonna psychologize me, I’ll spare you the effort and do it for you. Here: read this. Search for “Yikes! I’m not gonna go that far!”