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Donald Trump and the “Flat Character” Problem

UD’s colleague, Thomas Mallon, considers Trump’s unsuitability for literary fiction.

Trump lacks even the two-dimensionality required in a sociopath; the emotional range is as impoverished as the vocabulary. Trump simply advances, like the Andromeda strain, a case of arrested development that is somehow also metastatic…

Trump’s defeat … will not render him measurably more affronted or angry or whatever he is. Because he is a flat character, it will leave him unchanged. Even if he cries that the contest was “rigged,” he will not feel the defeat. I predict that he will use his concession speech to talk about how many millions of votes he got in the primaries and how throughout the fall his crowds remained bigger than Hillary’s.

Margaret Soltan, October 25, 2016 10:58AM
Posted in: democracy

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2 Responses to “Donald Trump and the “Flat Character” Problem”

  1. Greg Says:

    This, always, has seemed exactly right to me. It’s possible that Giuliani would be a fascinating study of descent, but then perhaps he was always been just an opportunist. Ivanka might be an interesting character. Speaking of her, here’s a story on the inevitable boycott.

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-shoppers-boycott-ivanka-trump-s-clothes-1477399500-htmlstory.html

    I bet she just wishes this all would go away. It’s doing nothing for her business, social etc aspirations.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Greg: FWIW: It’s always seemed to me that Trump’s compulsive sexuality – the infinite grab – is this “flat” principle in action. He can do no other. Eternal recurrence. To quote Bob Dylan: “Ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

    Hence Melania’s unhelpful comment that she has “two boys at home.” (Unhelpful if you’d like to be perceived as someone who could be president.)

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