Trump is in the Dark Pentagon, and I don't mean the home of the Dept. of Defense. By Hal M. Brown

Trump could have easily become the dictator he wanted to be without the massive national protests or numerous court rulings, up to the Supreme Court, which went against him. He could have avoided all of the lawsuits as well. He could have achieved his primary goal of becoming a dictator in the mold of the autocrats he admires just by having had slowed the fuck down. He did not need his blizkrieg. After all, he was not literally conquering Europe or invading Iraq with a shock and awe military attack.

I wrote Sadists ® U.S: Trump and The Dark Tetrad, By Hal M. Brown (It should be obvious that Trump is an example of someone who has all of the traits of The Dark Tetrad: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism” on March 23rd.

Now I propose adding a fifth major personality trait, which fits Trump, to the four comprising the Dark Tetrad. That is the trait of manic impatience. In psychiatry mania is an element of bipolar disorder. This is marked usually by high energy, racing thoughts, irritability, and rapid speech. Traits in these personality polygons, whether the Dark Triad or Dark Tetrad, or in my new proposed Dark Pentagon, don’t have to be actual diagnosable psychiatric disorders. Trump, for example, ticks enough the boxes for having a narcisstic personality disorder to fit the critera:

• A grandiose sense of self-importance (exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

• Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

• Believing that they are "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

• Requiring excessive admiration

• A sense of entitlement (unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations)

• Being interpersonally exploitative (taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends)

• Lacking empathy (unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others)

• Often being envious of others or believing that others are envious of them

• Showing arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

  Depending on how one wants to shoehorn Trump into the diagnostic criteria, he may or may not fit being a psychopath (now called antisocial personality), he doesn’t fit sadistic personalty disorder, but takes pleasure in making his enemies and others suffer. Machiavellian isn’t a psychiatric disorder.

Trump doesn’t have mania in the psychiatric sense, but he is manic in the way the term is used colloquially. For example, someone may be described as having a manic personality or a workplace may be said to have manic energy.

Trump’s mania is closely related to his grandiose narcissism. He felt the need to prove to himself and the world that Trump, the Make America Great president, was so great he could do everything all at once. His being manic made it impossible for him to slow down when it became obvious that he was making one mistake after another.

If you watched Rachel Maddow last night you saw her go over the long list of mistakes Trump made so far in his administration. Here are just a few of them:

Most of them were a result of his headlong and headstrong manic rush to do everything all at once. Many had to do with allowing Musk to implement DOGE and his Liberation day tarriff war, but others involved his rush to deport as many people as possible as quickly as possible, and his intransigence in assuring that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States.

In my Dark Pentagram, all of the traits play off each other, but the result isn’t a quintet making beautiful music. It’s not the New York Woodwind Quintet at Julliard or one of the best pop quintets, for example The Spice Girls and who can forget The Jackson Five.

The elements in Trump’s Dark Pentagram aren’t making music. What they are creating is a chaotic cacophony.

Had Trump been able to move slowly and developed a strategy to implement his plan over two years, those of us who were comparing him to Hitler would have been more credibly accused of having Trump derangement syndrome. There would be less likelihood that the Democrats will prevail in the next elections and take control of Congress. By the end of his term, Trump will have turned us into as much of a dictatorship as Russia, China, and North Korea. There will be a good chance he could cancel the next election in order to be president for life.

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