According to Greek legend, a young man was so fascinated and awestruck by his own image reflected on the surface of a pool that he sat lovingly gazing at the water’s edge for so long that he succumbed to his own vanity and eventually transformed into a flower that carries his name: “Narcissus.”

In the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), Fifth Edition, Text Revision, 2022, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is defined as comprising a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts as indicated by the presence of at least five of the following nine criteria:

1. A grandiose sense of self-importance
2. A preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. A belief that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions
4. A need for excessive admiration
5. A sense of entitlement
6. Interpersonally exploitative behavior
7. A lack of empathy
8. Envy of others or a belief that others are envious of him or her
9. A demonstration of arrogant and haughty behaviors or attitudes.

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Narcissistic Personality Disorder falls within the overall category of “sociopathology,” in which a person’s antisocial behavior demonstrates a lack of moral concern or responsibility or a deficit of social conscience. The DSM classifies this condition as “Antisocial Personality Disorder” (APD), defined as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”

Psychologists diagnose individuals as having APD if they manifest three or more of these symptoms: repeatedly violating social norms related to established laws and performing acts that result in frequent arrests; deceitfulness, dishonesty, and lying; impulsivity; irritability and repeated aggressiveness; reckless disdain for personal safety or the safety of others; consistent irresponsibility in work settings; frequent failures in honoring financial commitments; lacking a sense of remorse.

While diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints have been foundational to a nation’s innovations and advancements, narcissistic sociopathic political leaders see this diversity as a challenge to their power, wealth, and prestige.

A group of psychiatrists published a book titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. The authors assert Trump has checked all the boxes for having a narcissistic sociopathic illness, specifically Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

They warn of the dangers he poses with his extreme power as president. Instead of retaining this power, Trump requires care and treatment so that he no longer poses so much danger to himself and the world.

Common sense

Trump bases his entire political philosophy on being “a stable genius” and on his “art of the deal.” He embraces the term “nationalism” with his so-called “America first” policies, which center on a patriarchal Christian white supremacist agenda.

He blames all the nation’s problems on an “invasion” of “criminal” elements of brown and Black people coming across our southern border, on Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs, and on a “radical gender ideology” perpetrated by Marxist Democrats who push for people to go under the knife to alter their sex.

Trump has proposed a U.S. expansionist policy by acquiring Greenland and Canada and retaking the Panama Canal.

Trump’s emotional illness was on full display during a press conference he held at the White House hours after the deadly collision of a regional American Airlines passenger plane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River.

After Trump completed his brief remarks about the tragedy on the Potomac, he dove ego-first into a murky diatribe. While providing no evidence, he blamed the Biden administration and diversity initiatives for the crash that claimed 67 lives.

“I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first,” Trump charged.

He targeted what he claimed was an “FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] diversity push [that] includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.”

“That is amazing,” he continued, “and then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in, and they want them. They can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so. Brilliant people have to be in those positions… And you need a very special talent, and a very special genius, to be able to do it.”

When a reporter asked him directly how he knew that diversity had something to do with the crash, Trump replied, “Because I have common sense.”

Trump’s newly installed Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, pledged at the press conference that the department will have “the best and brightest in every position possible.” By figuratively kissing Trump’s ring, he declared, “The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department.”

In his book, Hitler: A Biography, Ian Kershaw argued that Adolf Hitler possessed all nine criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Hitler believed that he was the finest artist and the most brilliant person and that anyone who was different from him was inferior.

Hitler based his entire political philosophy on being an intellectually brilliant strategist. He embraced the term “German nationalist” and centered all his nation’s problems on his racist worldview.

He believed that people could be categorized into a hierarchy of races, with the superior “Aryans” on top and the “inferior” races down the ladder, with Jews and Africans on the bottom.

Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race of people who were determined to weaken or “bastardize” other races as they controlled world economies and policies. Other so-called lower races of people also included disabled people, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, and other minorities.

Hitler’s extreme nationalism dictated that the German “Aryan” race should dominate. His expansionist policies sought Lebensraum (“living space or room”) for the German people.

Hitler blamed Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I, claiming they had “stabbed Germany in the back,” even though they represented an extremely small minority and many fought on the side of Germany.

Monoculturalism in education

Trump has made eliminating DEI a central focus in the opening days of his second term. Though not a new phenomenon, we are also seeing some parents, legislators, and school administrators attempting to place severe limits on the teaching of our nation’s past and the legacies of this history upon the lives of people and institutions today.

Emboldened by the first Trump White House, Republican legislators throughout the U.S. have enacted new laws and policies intended to define the narrow parameters of what and how students will discuss our country’s past and present.

Many of these efforts have sought to ban Critical Race Theory, even though it is not taught in public schools and is generally discussed in selective college and university graduate-level courses.

Trump is actually not very sharp on the educational front. It was his family’s wealth and privilege that afforded him the ability to attend the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Though he incessantly boasts of his gigantic intellect, superior grades, and that he is “a very stable genius,” he placed an embargo against his former alma mater never to disclose his transcripts.

In her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, niece Mary Trump disclosed how her uncle cheated throughout his life in business and other areas.

She even claimed that Trump paid someone to take the SAT tests for him to get into the University of Pennsylvania. Trump was “worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of his class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted,” she said.

She wrote that he enlisted “a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him,” adding that the test-taker was compensated for the effort.

“Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well,” she wrote.

Throughout his political career, Trump has attempted to roll back the clock on issues of racial justice and LGBTQ+ topics.

Schools across the nation are banning books and other curricular materials in the political right’s attempt to control what young people learn. They have morphed terms like “woke” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” into hate-filled and frightening epithets.

During his first term, Trump lambasted The 1619 Project, a book and school curricular program designed by The New York Times Magazine and, as the organizers explained, “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”  

In his ongoing attempts to censor racial justice and bury the impact of systemic racism, Trump’s first administration published its 1776 Report, designed to “restore patriotic education in schools.” By patriotic, it meant white male European Americans. Its purpose was to demonize past and ongoing efforts to achieve civil rights for all.  

The report equated progressivism to fascism; in its twisted “logic,” it argued that the civil rights movement incorporated similar ideas to those embraced by the defenders of slavery, and it sought to downplay the serious and dangerous legacy of racism in U.S. history.

Essentially, Trump’s educational policy is one of propaganda based on European American-centric viewpoints that place white people as the real victims of U.S. history.

Trump’s ultimate aim is to privatize all educational institutions and funnel public money into these institutions through a voucher system.     

In 1933, Nazi stormtroopers invaded, ransacked, and closed The Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish and homosexual sexuality researcher. The Institute conducted early sexuality research and was a precursor to the Indiana-based Kinsey Institute in the United States.

Stormtroopers carried away and torched over 10,000 volumes of books and research documents, calling the Institute “an international center of the white slave trade” and “an unparalleled breading ground of dirt and filth.”

Soon thereafter, the Nazis seized other “un-German” books, including those written by Jewish authors.

The Nazi government attempted to control the minds of the young, and it imposed Nazi beliefs into the school curriculum. A key part of biology classes became “race science.”

Geography class became the geopolitical study of the German homeland as fundamental. Physical education was mandated for all youth, as was community labor service. Young people were encouraged to join Hiter Youth groups.

[Not a] Conclusion

Nazi Germany and today’s America are two historical eras led by men with clear sociopathic and narcissistic personality disorders.

Trump is destined to drown in his own narcissism the same way Hitler did. Hitler did not transform into a fragrant flower, nor will Trump.

My hope is that the world has learned how to handle Trump from its mistakes in handling Hitler.  

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